


The Grandfather Paradox

by DashWestwood



Series: Doctor Who: The Lost Episodes [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DashWestwood/pseuds/DashWestwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cracks in the universe have been dealt with, but the Doctor faces an even bigger mystery - and to solve it, he'll need to make the ultimate sacrifice. The third and final story in a planned "mini-arc" trilogy set within Season 5 of Doctor Who.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Man Who Wasn't There

**CHAPTER 1: The Man Who Wasn't There**

Calloused feet, dirty and bruised, dug into the worn rock incline. Pair beside pair, row after row, they battled desperately for traction, yet couldn't help but slip against the enormous mass that pressed upon them from in front. Its force was imposing. Its weight was immense. But an army of bodies, caked with desert sand that clung to every bead of sweat, heaved a guttural groan under the scorching sun and pushed as a united force, gradually inching the stone weight forward with each strained step.

It was, in fact, more than just a simple weight. Cut with extraordinary precision, its yellow faces smooth as polished marble, it was a massive cube. And it wasn't just any cube, but the piece that would serve to finally complete a very large structure.

At ground level, some distance away, a lone figure squinted against the searing glare to take in its full view. There it stood, majestic. Isolated against the empty skyline, completely without competition, looking equal parts imposing and isolated. The construction ramp had extended with the building's scale, gradually increasing in height and length in order to allow the delivery of each block right to the very top, which towered into the heavens.

Stone ground against stone. With enormous effort, the final block was moved into place - into the only place it could go, with a clear gap designed for one final block to fill it, like the final piece to a jigsaw puzzle. It fit snugly into position, and the second it did, an elated cheer erupted from the hundreds who had helped it there, filtering down to the thousands who were positioned along the length of the incline. Thousands of cheers, all cheering for the same cause.

Back on the ground, their exclamations could be heard, albeit faintly. That was the signal, then. That was it. The figure held up a weathered parchment against the skyline, checking the distant structure against a sketched representation. The height, the width, it all seemed to match. It all seemed built according to specification.

A towering stone monolith. Four rectangle sides that climbed tall into the sky, with eight square panelled indentations carved into each surface. A solid square foundation, an angled peak, capped at the very top with a cylinder that emerged from its centre, as if on a mission to touch the stars.

A huge stone replica of the TARDIS.

* * *

"Space and time isn't safe yet. The TARDIS exploded for a reason."

Dressed in his top hat and tails, the Doctor circled the console as he addressed Rory and Amy, still outfitted in their own wedding attire. "Something drew the TARDIS to this particular date and blew it up. But why? And why now? The Silence, whatever it is, is still out there, and I have to…"

His train of thought afforded a fraction of a reprieve - long enough for him to finally register the sound of a ringing phone. "Excuse me a moment," he said as he picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

The Doctor's tone instantly became one of recognition, of familiarity. "Oh! Hello. I'm sorry, this is a very bad line." A pause. His tone fell. "No, but that's not possible. She was sealed into the Seventh Obelisk, I was at the prayer meeting. Well, no, I get that it's important. An Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express..." A smile crept over his face as his eyes darted over to Amy and Rory. "...in space."

He paused. "Give us a mo."

Cupping his hand over the receiver, the Doctor turned to the newly-wedded couple. "Sorry, something's come up. This will have to be goodbye."

"Yeah, I think it's goodbye," Amy nodded. She turned to Rory. "Do you think it's goodbye?"

"Definitely goodbye," he said.

Immediately, Amy headed for the TARDIS doors. She poked her head out into the night - into the overgrown garden of her childhood house - and waved with heavy, deliberate emphasis. "Goodbye!"

And then, realising she actually meant it, Amy allowed herself a moment to take in the sight for one last time. All those years. All those memories. All that longing, back in her childhood, for the Raggedy Man to return in his magic blue box.

"Goodbye," she said.

And she closed the door.

With the phone still in hand, the Doctor smiled. He put the handset to his ear; his company was decided. "Don't worry about a thing, Your Majesty. We're on our way."

He hung up, then turned his attention to the TARDIS controls. Throwing a lever, the craft was set into motion, and all three held onto the console as they balanced against its wayward movements. Amy and Rory exchanged excited glances, not knowing what awaited them - but knowing that the uncertainty was part of the thrill.

And then, without warning, the Doctor pushed all his weight down on a nearby switch. Metal screeched against metal as the TARDIS shuddered intermittently, then with a loud bang, stopped cold in an abrupt halt. Hollow silence filled the room as the Doctor brushed his hands in a satisfied motion. "Or at least that's what she'll think."

Amy blinked. "What?"

The Doctor skipped up the stairs and ducked behind a wooden changing screen that was set up on the observation platform. He wasted no time in flinging his clothes over the barrier and grabbing the garments he had draped over it previously. "Amy, there are certain things in this life that should never be dignified with a response. Knock-knock jokes, I've heard them all. Novelty alarm clocks rarely come packaged with any genuine novel. But what really grates my cheese are ham-fisted grabs for Time Lord attention. Honestly, an A.D. train hosting a B.C. entity in X.Y. space? Give me a break."

"X.Y. space?"

He emerged from behind the partition, fully dressed in his usual bow-tie-and-tweed-jacket attire. "It's not a thing, I just made it up. Point is, there's a certain individual who's trying to land some face time with yours truly, and thinks that throwing a bunch of history-clashy stuff at the wall is the way to appeal to a time traveller's sense of curiosity. But if she thinks I'm falling for the eighth-oldest trick in the—"

The Doctor was cut off by a deep, booming toll, the noise somehow coming from above yet reverberating from within the depths of the TARDIS walls. Each tone was long and deep. Foreboding. Dangerous.

The Cloister Bell.

The Doctor's eyes widened in horror. He leapt to the controls and made furious movements on its array of switches and levers.

"What's happening?" said Rory. "What's that noise?"

The Doctor didn't look at him. "Bad and big, big and bad. Pick one. Pick two if you like, they're as bad as each other."

He skittered around the console, pressed button after button, trying desperately to narrow down the cause for alarm. He activated the monitor and was greeted with a flurry of numbers that raced up its screen, faster than the human eye could process. The sight instantly caused him to freeze on the spot; he stared at the display with a pale look, his mouth agape.

"Oh my..."

Rory peered over and tried to make sense of the screen. He tilted his head. "Do they mean something, Doctor?"

The Doctor didn't seem to register the question; he was still lost in his own musings. "It's like... nothing... it's nothing I've ever... it's massive..."

"Oy! Doctor!" Amy piped up with a short and sharp outburst, and he immediately looked around. She'd grabbed his attention. She took a breath, and spoke again in a calmer tone. "Words. Find the right ones. Then use them."

"Yes. Words." The Doctor was clearly flustered. He ran his fingers through his hair as he attempted to explain the situation. "The TARDIS operates across all of time and space; she can pick up anomalies everywhere and everywhen. And right now, she's picked up an impending anomaly that's… I need to get a lock." He turned his attention back to the monitor and twisted one of its dials, as though he was tuning in an old television. "It's getting closer. It's closing in lightning fast… half a light year away… one-twelfth…"

He swallowed. "Five hundred meters..."

Amy and Rory exchanged worried glances. Whatever was approaching sounded dangerous; they desperately looked around for something to hang on to, eventually settling on the nearby console railing. They clenched the framework tight and clenched their eyes shut, waiting for the impact.

They waited.

But nothing happened.

Cautiously, Rory peeked open one eye. The Doctor was still standing at the console, his words had trailed off into a stunned silence. He simply stood there, aghast. Rory could see that the monitor, rather than ticking through a furious stream of numbers, had now frozen. Its display was stuck, the numbers unchanging. Some sort of data overload, Rory guessed. He ventured forth.

"Doctor?" he asked.

A cold moment passed before the Doctor gained control over his senses. He sprung to life, darted around the console to work the controls at a frantic pace, setting the TARDIS into motion. "Okay," he said. "You wanted my attention? Fine. You've got it. I don't know what you're playing at, but you've got it. I'm coming."

Amy approached the Doctor. "What's going on?"

"You two, get changed. Sensible top, comfy pair of shoes." He caught his babble before it took hold, and paused long enough to look directly at Amy and Rory. "An anomaly," he said slowly. "The mother of all anomalies. Something that's threatening to break reality by existing when it shouldn't."

The Cloister Bell continued to sound, though the Doctor no longer seemed to register its booming tone.

"What is it?" asked Amy.

The Doctor looked at her, the colour drained from his face.

"It's... me."


	2. Under Pressure

**CHAPTER 2: Under Pressure**

Air shifted around a vast, cavernous room as the TARDIS slowly materialised. It completed its transition with a hefty wheeze and a booming thud, and the Doctor wasted no time in opening the doors to step outside.

He surveyed his surroundings. A pristine, polished turquoise floor stretched in all directions, its surface reflected walls lined with massive stone columns that supported an arched ceiling framework of criss-crossed steel beams. Above, several security cameras twitched intermittently, their lenses pointed directly at the Doctor. He gave one a cheerful wave. Its presence, its overtly technological appearance, was at odds with the room's design; in fact, the architecture overall appeared to be a subtle jumble of design. A mix of old and new.

With each step he took, the Doctor's feet clacked in echo on the hard floor. The sound reverberated within the large space and stood out against the sheer lack of noise elsewhere. Behind him, Rory and Amy cautiously emerged from the TARDIS, their worried looks saying it all. "Where's this, then?" Amy asked.

The Doctor kept moving forward. He approached a lone desk set in the middle of the room, comically small against the large interior - and behind that desk sat a solitary humanoid figure. A young woman, whose attention was focused on a transparent computer monitor in front of her.

He stood before the woman, but she didn't register his presence. An awkward moment passed. The Doctor cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the desk, the noise positively booming within the empty space. Unfazed, she looked up, bored. She spoke in monotone. "Welcome to the Shadow Proclamation. Please be advised your presence here is monitored at all times. How can I help you?"

"Shadow Proclamation," said the Doctor. "Yes. Good. I like what you've done with the place. Nice columns. Negative space really brings life to a room."

He flashed a smile, but it wasn't returned. The woman simply stared at him with a blank, humourless expression. The Doctor's face gradually fell.

"Strictly business, then. Fine. I've come to see the Shadow Architect. She's expecting me, I believe."

The woman looked down at her monitor. "Name and species."

"The Doctor, one hundred percent Time Lord. And flanking me are the brand new Mister and Missus Williams, Amy and Rory, human and human."

The woman's expression immediately changed. She looked up at the Doctor, eyes wide and alert. Her hand slammed down hard on a red button embedded in the desk, and the room was filled with a piercing high-pitched alarm. Rory and Amy winced as they put their hands to their ears. The Doctor, himself on full alert, spun on his heel.

He spun to see a swarm of Judoon. They approached from all directions, two rows deep. The Judoon surrounded the desk, enclosing the Doctor, Amy, and Rory within their circle and stared at them down the sights of some heavy electronic firearms, all clicking into an armed state with one united motion. And there they stood, ready.

Amy tugged the Doctor's jacket sleeve. She tried to speak over the alarm. "Doctor..."

"Don't worry," he said. "This always happens. Well, I say always, but this is a new one for me, and normally I'm the king of always. No..."

He looked around. Judoon stood shoulder to shoulder. No way out.

"...this is a first."

* * *

"How about this? Is this a first, too?"

Sullen, with crossed arms, Rory addressed the Doctor. With Amy slumped beside him, all three sat on a grey concrete bench, confined by three equally grey concrete walls. In front of them was a laser grid, a mesh of red beams of light that served as a barrier. A prison.

"You mean holding cells in general?" said the Doctor. "Been there. But as for this particular cell…"

"It doesn't matter," said Rory. And that ended the conversation.

He got up from the bench, a deliberate move away from the Doctor, and stood at the light bars. He angled his head to try and peer down the dingy hallway before him, to see if he could attract someone's attention. Rory called out into the darkness. "Hello? Anyone there? Anyone with the faintest idea of what's going on? Anyone who can tell me why I'm spending my honeymoon _in prison_?"

With those two words, said in heavy emphasis, Rory turned to the Doctor and stared right into his eyes. The Doctor refused to play his game, and instead devoted his attention to a crease in the concrete ceiling.

Amy stood and started pacing the cell. "Doctor, I've got to say, this isn't how I pictured it either. What's the story? Why are we here?"

Again, no response. His focus was elsewhere.

Amy huffed and joined Rory at the laser grid. They both looked out, helpless. Rory kept his gaze straight ahead.

"Think he's got a plan?" he said.

"He's the Doctor, of course he's got a plan." Amy allowed herself a faint smirk. "Other times he just does stuff and somehow it all works out."

Rory turned to face Amy. "Why did you do it? When you went with him by yourself, just you and him. You left in the night to escape with a man who could show you the stars. But there's more to it than that, isn't there? You go willingly with someone, you need to trust them - and you trusted him right from the start." He paused to ask her again. "Why?"

Amy sighed. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. Even then, but especially now. That man, he just gets in your head. He charms his way forth. He sells you the big promise without telling you how he's going to deliver it. But somehow that's part of the allure. Yeah, things have gone wrong. They go wrong more often than not. And yet... you look back and you realise they would have gone worse if it wasn't for him. Or more to the point, you realise they couldn't have gone any other way."

"But why risk it at all? You know it's dangerous - why throw yourself at it?"

"Wouldn't you?"

Rory paused. He turned to look back through the red lasers. "Yeah. I would."

A moment lingered between them. Rory pushed a smile as he attempted to lighten the mood. "I suppose if things got too hairy, you could always go back in time to prevent it."

Amy smiled with him. "Not according to Mr Timey Wimey. Something about not interfering with your own time stream. I don't know. Laws of the universe."

"I guess messing with the past creates more trouble. Like the whole grandfather paradox thing."

The Doctor looked around. "The what?"

Rory and Amy turned to face him; clearly, they'd managed to get his attention. "You know, the grandfather paradox," said Rory. "How you can't go back in time and kill your grandfather, because then you'd never be born so you can't go back in time and kill your... didn't you ever watch 'The Twilight Zone'?"

"I don't care for reality television," said the Doctor, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "And besides, it's totally wrong. You can."

"You can what?"

"Go back and time and kill your grandfather."

Amy and Rory stared at the Doctor with open mouths. "But how?"

He pointed a finger in the air. "Well, disclaimers. Technically it counts on you overcoming the torrent of roadblocks that will naturally occur between you and your end goal. It's not easy; there's an infinite number of things that could prevent you from getting within spitting distance of meddling with the past. You want to kill your grandfather, but how do you know you won't be hit by a car as you cross the street? Or get distracted by a pretty girl? Or choke on the hamburger you have for lunch? How do you know your gun won't jam, or you won't be tackled to the ground by a bystander the moment you take it out of your pocket? You're one human up against limitless chance. Your odds never get better than microscopic."

"Okay," said Rory, "but suppose they did..."

"Suppose they did. Suppose you stared chance in the eye and told it to push off, and you somehow managed to wade through the odds to find yourself pointing a gun at your grandfather in the past. And let's entertain the notion that the gun fires, and the bullet hits him square in the chest, and he dies. You've done it. But you haven't changed anything."

"What do you mean?" said Amy. "Of course you have."

"You haven't changed. You've _created_."

A confused silence hung between the group. "I don't understand," said Rory.

The Doctor sighed. "You humans never do. Remember: time isn't a line of A to B to C. If something happens to A, it doesn't mean you've prevented C. Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey compensates for the change. It splits it off like a branch on a tree. The consequences get diverted out of that event and into a whole new reality, running parallel to the old one from the point of difference. It happens billions of times a day, every day, since before time began, at every crossroad of decision. Any point where one choice is made over another. You don't talk to the pretty girl or you do. You choose sunny side up instead of over easy. You turn left instead of right. Just as every action has a reaction, every decision has a universe that hosts its consequences. Every time something could have been, there's a universe in which... it... is."

"I still don't understand," said Rory. "If I've gone back in time and killed my grandfather, why would I still be alive?"

"Because he's _not_ your grandfather. Don't you see? The man you killed is in a universe where he never met your grandmother, or never had any children, or became a monk, or any number of things. He's not your grandfather - he's just some guy. You killing him created a universe where he has no relation to you. You pull the trigger, and the change becomes just another 'what if' possibility on an infinite spectrum. That's the thing that people don't understand about time: you're not severing a link in the past, you're creating an altogether new chain."

"So... he's from a universe that was created before my actions needed to create it?"

"Now you're getting it! Wibbly-wobbly!"

Amy scratched her head. "And that's why paradoxes don't occur? Because a time-altering event creates a parallel universe?"

"Exactly! It doesn't conflict with what has been, but creates a reality that hosts what _could_ have been."

"So how come your kind's all about preventing paradoxes? Normally you're going on about how they'll break time, but now you're saying they won't?"

The Doctor furrowed his brow. "But... they will..." He looked pained, as though he was chipping through to an encased memory, trying to reach a tip-of-the-tongue moment. As though the answer was so close, but so far out of reach. "They won't... why won't they... why didn't I..." He gripped Amy on the shoulders, forcing her to look right at him. "Paradoxes are real. There are laws against that sort of… or at least there were. But parallel universes are real. What about them? What about Rose?"

"Who's Rose?"

"It's like… it's like there's two different sets of knowledge in my head. Like I'm looking in two different directions at the same time. Both views are correct." He paused. "Aren't they?"

A new voice spoke. "You tell me."

The three turned towards the source. Beyond the laser grid stared an old woman with wiry white hair and gaunt features that showed the bones through her stretched skin. Fiery red eyes glared with focused intent. Strict. Authoritative.

Rory looked at her. "Who are you?"

"You may call me the Shadow Architect." She stared at the Doctor and pursed her lips. "And you may stop calling me 'Your Majesty'."

"Well, what would you prefer?" the Doctor said, shelving his previous confusion in place of a cocksure air. "Grand Poobah? Sweet cheeks? Darling?"

"Doctor..."

"Snugglecakes?"

"Doctor! I must ask for your full attention."

"Yeah, well, you've got it, but it's all been pretty ham-fisted if you want the honest verdict. I mean, throwing out a clump of hooks that don't match up, just to get me interested enough in a house call?"

She tilted her head. "Hooks?"

"Hooks. Dangling teases of nonsensical nibbly tidbits. It's B.C. over here, it's A.D. over there, and in the middle there's a man with a time machine. The Orient Express in space? Before you tell me the one about the talking dinosaurs, tell me how long you honestly thought it would take for me to see through such a ridiculous ploy. Because as far as I'm concerned, this is a new personal best."

The Shadow Architect looked indignant. "I'm unsure why knowledge of the Space Express escapes you. It's very real, and has been for centuries. Admittedly, the escaped princess is less so - she remains safe in her obelisk. But it doesn't matter, you're here all the same. And with a second helping? Doctor, that's double the punishment."

The Doctor grimaced. "Look, enough with the games," he said, frustrated. "Why bring me here? Why did you need my attention?"

"To discuss an anomaly."

The Doctor fell silent. His hearts stopped in his chest. He nodded slowly. "Ah."

"So you know about it?"

He tried to swallow, but his throat felt uncomfortably tight. "TARDIS picked it up," he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"So you know why we needed you to come here."

The Doctor said nothing.

"I had hoped to raise this with you with more tact than this," said the Shadow Architect. "Despite the subterfuge, you're deserving of something significantly less crass. But now you see why it was necessary. We wanted you because we wanted them."

And she pointed. Right at Rory and Amy.

The Doctor's alarm overwrote his confusion. Was the Shadow Architect not talking about him? Was he not the anomaly? What was going on?

"You want them?" the Doctor said. He controlled his voice in an effort to maintain a front of composure. "What for? They've done nothing."

The Shadow Architect raised her eyebrows. "They've done everything. They're humans, Doctor."

"And they have been all their lives. So what?"

"Don't give me that. You harbouring two humans on board your ship means you're just as responsible as they are."

Anger filtered into the Doctor's tone. "What have you got against humans?"

"They've been extinct for thousands of years."

He was taken aback. The Doctor looked at the Shadow Architect. "Extinct?"

"You should know, Doctor. You were there. You saw it happen. In the human year of 1981, a Fashtren genetic resonator killed every last one."

The Doctor stepped away from the light bars in disbelief. His mind reeled at super speed. "But that's..." His memories peeled back to that moment as he saw the events unfold in his mind's eye. The resonator. The ship. The explosion. He replayed the scenario, again and again, to assure himself of the truth. "We stopped them. Miranda stopped them."

A lone figure advanced through the darkness. "I wish I-I did."

It was a female voice, meek and gentle. The owner was shrouded in a thin black robe, the hood flowing over a bowed head as its length brushed along the floor with each dainty step. "Every day, I wish I did. There's not a moment that goes-goes by where I don't wish I could do it differently. That I made a different choice. But instead, I have-have to live with that burden. The death of an entire race."

She lifted her head to look into the cell. "Hello, Doctor."

Long, blonde hair. Wide blue eyes. Perfect complexion.

"Miranda..."

Rory turned to the Doctor. "Sorry, you two know each other?"

"She... saved humanity. She sacrificed herself." He looked at the woman, studied her every feature. Looked for some sort of giveaway, a clue, that explained her presence. "How are you here? Amy and I, we watched you die."

"A failure as a field agent," said the Shadow Architect, her tone stern enough to melt steel, and Miranda bowed her head in response. "Project Miranda was developed at great cost to the Proclamation, but ultimately to no avail. Her primary function was not realised. Humanity was lost."

"That's not what happened," said the Doctor. "Miranda, you know that's not what happened."

Her head remained lowered. "I killed them-them all."

"Despite her failure," said the Shadow Architect, "we decided against decommission. Instead, we reallocated Miranda's skills elsewhere within the Proclamation. Cluster analysis was deemed the most appropriate fit."

Miranda appeared to bristle at this, but said nothing.

"Cluster analysis?" said the Doctor.

"Bioscanning universe quadrants for any and all lifeforms, so we might keep an eye on who's where. We assigned Miranda to low traffic areas. And she found something." The Shadow Architect looked directly at Amy. "She found you."

Amy looked aghast. "Doctor," she said. "What's she talking about?"

"That's what I'd like to know," he said, staring at the Shadow Architect. "You detect a human lifeform, you get it brought to your doorstep… all for what, exactly?"

"Oh Doctor," sighed the Shadow Architect. "You really don't understand what she means? What both of them mean?"

"Understand what?"

The Shadow Architect looked at him for a moment, then produced a small datapad from her pocket. She passed it through the light bars to the Doctor; he accepted it and examined its display. His eyes scanned the information, then froze. He read it again.

"This is impossible."

"I assure you it's not."

"But it's impossible."

"Our best Shadow teams have analysed the data for months."

"Then analyse it again." The Doctor's neck muscles tensed. "Tell your teams to brush up on their laws of basic physics. This simply cannot happen as a matter of scientific fact."

"We know." And the look on the Shadow Architect's face said it all: _we're just as thrown by this as you are._

The Doctor took a moment to read her expression. He sensed what it reflected, and its weight appeared to press upon him from above; his shoulders visibly slumped as he grappled with the ramifications. The Shadow Architect noticed, and attempted some measure of sympathy.

"You can't deny the evidence," she said.

"No," he said. "I don't suppose I can."

Amy stepped forward. "And for those of us who have no idea of what's going on, would someone care to enlighten us?"

The Doctor attempted to shake off his daze as he searched for the right words. "Think of the universe," he said. "One big massive universe, with all its stars and planets and cosmic dust. Now put it on a scale. Measure its weight."

"Okay…"

He tapped the datapad. "The universe's weight is wrong."

"What?"

"It's wrong. It's not what it should be. In fact, it's heavier. The universe has more... stuff. A lot more stuff.

"Two humans," said the Shadow Architect. "Alive when there should be none. That's more than enough. Look at the data. Look at the added pressure they're putting on space and time. Doctor, you know as well as I do what that means. You know what needs to be done."

The Doctor's lips went dry.

The Shadow Architect looked at Amy. "You died in the resonator. And you—" she looked at Rory "—you died as a result. You all did. Yet here you are. Humans in a universe where there are none."

"So..." Amy ventured. "You want us to… repopulate the species?"

A blank stare. "No."

Rory shuffled his feet.

"The Shadow Proclamation failed to save humanity. But with you two alive, there's a far greater threat that's pressing upon the fabric of space and time itself. You two are an anomaly. The catalysts of a universe imbalance, sending our entire plane of existence into a terminal velocity. And with each passing moment, the weight is increasing - the Doctor can tell you that. It's spiralling into implosion. Which means, in order to relieve the pressure, we must eliminate the catalyst."

Amy went pale. "What?"

"You two. You two must die."


	3. Time and Tide

**CHAPTER 3: Time and Tide**

"I think I misjudged knock-knock jokes," said the Doctor. "Compared to you, they're a riot."

"I've never been more serious," said the Shadow Architect. "To relieve the universe of its extraneous stress, we need to remove the anomaly - that is, two humans who should not exist. Now enough delay. It's time for what needs to be done." She looked at Amy. "Come."

Amy backed away into the cell. "No, you stay away from me."

"Come with us or we'll move you by force."

The Doctor stepped forward. "This is... this is a lot for us to process. I'm sure you can understand that. And I don't agree with your methods. I find them extremely humourless and excessive. But I respect that the greater good makes them necessary."

Amy looked at the Doctor, aghast. "What are you doing?"

"Give me five minutes with the humans," said the Doctor. "Enough time to say goodbye. After that, you may do with them as you wish."

Rory lunged at the Doctor. "You snake!"

He tried to land a punch, but the Doctor grabbed his wrist and deflected the blow. The Shadow Architect spoke sharply. "Enough!"

Both stopped in their tracks.

"I don't understand your sentimentality for such a volatile species, Doctor, but I'll grant your request. Five minutes. After it's done, we'll deal with you next."

The Shadow Architect turned and walked into the shadows. The sound of her heels clacking on the concrete faded into the darkness. The Doctor waited until they were totally gone and, satisfied that they were alone, he let go of Rory's wrist and turned to the group.

"We're getting out of here. All of us."

He spoke with urgency. A noticeable sparkle danced in his eyes. He was alert - more alert than ever. "Her Majesty is right. There's a problem with the universe. But she's got the fundamentals totally wrong — it's much worse than she realises." He darted around the cell as he tried to distill the torrent of information racing through his head into a serviceable explanation. "Things happening when they shouldn't. Things living when they shouldn't. The temporal fabric of time and space has ruptured. Stuff is bleeding into our universe from... oh, look, let me show you."

The Doctor reached into his jacket pocket and produced a black marker. He darted to the back cell wall and drew three simple circles, side by side, onto the grey concrete surface.

"Um," said Miranda. "Graffiti adds an extra five years to your-your sentence."

The Doctor pointed to the middle circle. "This is us," he said. "This is our universe. These two beside us, they're parallel universes. And between them is nothing. There's no contact. Just three lovely self-contained universes."

He drew again, three more circles. This time he drew them with a clear overlap, where the edge of one circle was drawn over its neighbour.

"This is what's happening now. This middle circle is still us, but look here. The edges are overlapping. They're bleeding into each other. Stuff from one universe is filtering into the next. Go back to those giant scales - that extra stuff is causing the weight of each universe to increase."

"What extra stuff?" said Rory.

"Anything. Anything and everything that's sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. It can be physical, like you and Amy. You're existing in an overlap with our universe that says humanity is alive and another that says humanity is dead. That's added pressure onto the fabric of space and time. And up here..." The Doctor tapped his head. "I'm overlapping between two sets of conflicting knowledge. The laws from one universe are battling with the laws of another. And Miranda — I'm sorry, but I knew there was something amiss with you, too."

Miranda looked confused. "Me?"

"You. Wonderful, perfect, complicated you. You're from the Shadow Proclamation alright, but not from the one in my universe. The Shadow Proclamation I know simply doesn't have the capacity to create something as amazing and advanced as a self-contained biodroid."

"How did you..."

"You're here because you've bled in from another Shadow Proclamation. Another universe. Same goes for that stupid space train. And — oh my goodness — Space Florida." The Doctor slapped his forehead with the heel of his palm. "Why didn't I notice before? Stupid Doctor, in front of you the whole time. They're not part of our universe. We're not part of theirs. All this, all of everything, from universe to universe, every single out of place thing has been bleeding together since the beginning of time."

"But how?" said Amy. Her voice quivered. "Because of me? Because of us?"

"Oh Amy," said the Doctor. "No. Not you. Her Majesty Architect was right about the problem, but not about the origin. You're a symptom, not the cause. Believe me when I say this has got less than nothing to do with you." He looked at Rory. "Both of you."

"Then what? Stuff's bleeding into our universe, but bleeding in from where?"

The Doctor inhaled, long and deep. He went to the heavy stone bench and, with great effort, moved it away from the wall and into the middle of the cell. In position, he stood on it and reached upwards so his black marker touched the ceiling. He began to draw along the faint concrete crease — the crease that had occupied his attention earlier — and as he did so, its formation was instantly recognisable. That distinct line. That distinct shape. It could only be one thing.

The crack.

The crack in the universe.

Amy look up in fear. "No," she said.

"Some erased their contents from time," said the Doctor, stepping down from the bench. "Some lead to other worlds. And evidentially, throughout all history, some opened leaks into adjoining universes."

She shook her head. "But those things are gone. You rebooted the universe. They never happened."

"Repairing a hole in a ship that's already taken on water is useless," said the Doctor. "That ship's still going to sink. And our universe has taken on a whole bunch of water. You, me, Rory. We're time travellers. We see things differently. We still have knowledge of the cracks, Prisoner Zero, Rosanna Calvierri, the Pandorica. We still remember a version of events that our universe says didn't happen. And knowledge is a very powerful thing." He pointed at the line on the ceiling. "The cracks have closed, yes. But they've left scars. And those scars are signs that the fabric of space and time hasn't fully healed. The water we've taken on board, and the water that's flowed into every other parallel universe, is enough to sink everything."

"Can we sail away from the boat metaphor?" said Rory.

"Fine, how about dimensional death by a thousand paper cuts? It starts with a few conflicting events like, say, space trains or advanced technology. They're non-sensical, they're curious oddities. But then they start to grow. And each one adds momentum to a downward spiral — that extra weight is causing those circles to move closer and closer until they're all right on top of each other. Except it's not just three universes, but an infinite number. Every universe that has ever and will ever exist will be overlapped and mixed together. The fabric of time and space is going to collapse into itself. Reality will be crushed. Time will be destroyed."

"Right," said Rory. "I think I preferred the boats."

"This is serious. This will happen unless each universe is returned to its original position. But to do that..." The Doctor's mental flow stopped; he'd reached a wall that even he struggled to find a way around. "Well, to do that you'd need a force of unimaginable power. Unbelievable power. To blast things back into place, you'd need a force massive enough to move universes."

"What could do such a thing?" Amy said.

"I don't know. But we won't find it in here." The Doctor turned to look through the red laser bars, right at Miranda. "You've got to let us out," he said.

She averted his gaze and stared down at her feet. "I can't..."

"You can," he urged. "You must. We sit here and space and time collapses. Besides..." The Doctor took a moment to regard Miranda's sad expression. "You wouldn't have sent that message to the TARDIS if you didn't want to help."

Miranda said nothing. If she was processing the Doctor's words, she showed no sign. A tense moment passed as the three inside the cell wondered what their next move would be should this one fail.

"They called it cluster analysis," she whispered. "But really, it was just their way to keep-keep me busy before decommission. They wanted me as far away as possible. They said low traffic areas, and they meant it. The lowest of the low. Sectors where only a handful of microbes pass-pass through every thousand years. It was a desk job created for the sole purpose of humiliation, but I did it anyway. What else could-could I do? For the longest time, it was just me keeping out of their way, until I found a trace of human life in the Quercon cluster. And it wasn't long-long after that when the Architect noticed. My data was taken away for secondary analysis. I didn't hear much about it, just enough to piece together their plans. When I found out that they wanted your humans dead, thinking it would solve-solve the anomaly..."

Slowly, very slowly, Miranda reached up with one hand and pressed it on a palm scanner positioned on her side of the bars. The laser mesh flickered and disappeared. Deactivated. They were free.

"...I knew you could help."

The Doctor stepped over the threshold and into the dark hallway. "I can. And you just did. Miranda, thank you. Now if you could point me in the direction of the TARDIS, that would be a supremely grand way of saying 'you're welcome.'"

"They'll have moved it," she said. "It'll be locked-locked up in the evidence bay."

"That's great."

"The evidence bay is guarded by a Judoon squad at all-all times."

"That's not so great."

An uncertain moment hung among the group, and the Doctor shook it off by leading a confident march down the prison hallway. The rest followed in his wake; Miranda caught his pace and followed alongside him.

"You're going anyway?" she asked.

"By way of a slight detour," he said. "What's in there?"

He was pointing to a nearby room, and Miranda looked at him with a bewildered expression. "That's the sentry quarters. But there's nothing in there."

The Doctor stuck his head in. A simple, spartan room greeted him, housing not much more than a table, some chairs, and a tall cabinet secured to the back wall. "There's no- _one_ in here," he said, "but there's most definitely some _thing_ in here."

He went to the cabinet and flung open the doors. Inside was a rack of firearms — the same type of equipment that the Judoon squad was wielding upon their arrival. Thick, angular, bulky devices they were, about the length of a rifle and emitting a constant electrical hum. The Doctor took one, felt its hefty weight with both hands and held it out to Miranda. "Here."

She hesitated, then took the device. She cradled it awkwardly. "What's this for?"

The Doctor brushed past her as he lead the group out of the room. "There's no time," he said. "And unless we keep moving, there'll be no time ever again."

They advanced along the hallway. The shadows began to recede as a distant light shone ahead, becoming ever brighter with each advancing step. Eventually, the group reached it and faced a simple sliding steel door set into the wall. A lone button was positioned to its side, and Miranda promptly leaned in to press it. A pleasant "ding" sounded.

An elevator.

The doors slid open, and...

...and standing behind them were two Judoon. They looked at the group in surprise, in shock. Their shocked expression was returned. No-one moved. No-one dared.

It felt like an eternity. Miranda fumbled for an explanation.

"I... err... we were just... well..."

The Doctor stepped forward. "Don't worry about us, we're being kept in line by our captor here while she forcibly marches us to our slow, painful deaths. She said something about brain vacuums. Horrible stuff. Tell me, how often do they replace those nozzles?"

The Judoon looked at the Doctor. Then at each other. Then back to the Doctor.

"TRO FO TRO."

And they exited the elevator, leaving it free for the group to enter.

The four piled in, and Miranda selected the appropriate floor. The doors slid closed, and once the compartment started to move, Miranda's shoulders crumbled. Her body, held rigid from shock, began to shake. "I-I'm sorry," she heaved through gasping breaths. "I didn't know what to say. They were-were just looking at me... I froze... I didn't... I couldn't..."

The Doctor smiled at her. "Never mind that now. They're gone. We're halfway out of here. You're helping, believe me. You're saving us."

She looked at him with pleading eyes. "Why do you keep tormenting me? I didn't save anyone! Back on Earth, I let them-them die!"

"Not in my universe, you didn't. In my universe, you saved them. You saved everyone. You were amazing, brave, selfless, and absolutely wonderful."

"But... but how can that be?"

"Because it's what happened. You, right here, right now, are a parallel possibility. But it doesn't mean you can't also be amazing and brave and selfless."

Miranda paused. She took a moment to consider the Doctor's words. "How did I do it?" she said. "I mean, your-your version of me. How did I preserve humanity?"

"By being brave and—"

"Doctor. The straight truth. You said you watched me die."

He looked away, searched for the right words to explain what happened. "You sacrificed yourself. You stood in place of Amy at the resonator. There was an overload, and you..."

Miranda didn't respond. Couldn't respond. It was clear how that sentence was going to finish.

The Doctor gave Miranda a playful nudge. "You want to know a secret? According to the TARDIS, I'm an anomaly too. More than an anomaly, in fact. A actual paradox. Something happens to me that makes my presence here right now an impossibility. I shouldn't be here." He put a finger to his lips, the sign for shush. "Don't tell your boss."

Miranda managed a smile.

The elevator door slid open, and the group stepped into a small room with a laser grid barrier. The tight confines were small, almost comical. "This is the evidence room?" said Rory. "Seems a little cosy. Where's all the evidence?"

Miranda pressed her palm onto a nearby wall scanner and the barrier faded, allowing further access. They ventured forth, and were immediately dwarfed by the sheer scale of what had opened out into a vast warehouse. A massive concrete floor was lined by rows upon rows of shelving that climbed up to a ceiling which seemed impossibly high. Distant lights shone down from overhead.

"Ah," said Rory, noticing the echo of his voice.

"This place is huge," said Amy.

The Doctor straightened his bow tie. "No time for the obvious. Big blue box. Miranda, I don't suppose they've got it filed under B?"

She shook her head.

"Of course not. Time to find it the old fashioned way, then. Come on. Can't be hard to spot."

They proceeded up the central aisle, turning their heads left and right to scan down the length of each secondary aisle.

"I feel like I'm in the world's biggest supermarket," said Amy. "And I can't find the tinned peas."

"They're always in the last place you look," said Rory.

"The last place!" exclaimed the Doctor. And he pointed.

Down one of the aisles was a large structure covered in a dirty canvas sheet. The telltale shape had the group racing towards it, and the Doctor picked up a corner and pulled it off. There it stood: the TARDIS.

"BO RO TRO FO!"

A deep booming voice caused all four to turn around in alarm. Standing before them were two Judoon — and despite their limited range of expression, a look of anger and annoyance was evident, enough to suggest they were the same two Judoon that had passed them by at the elevator.

And standing between them was the Shadow Architect.

"That's the last five minutes you'll ever receive," she said.

The Doctor spread his hands. "We're just getting the grand tour before our slow, painful deaths. Nice supermarket you've got here."

The Shadow Architect's face remained unmoved. "You're not leaving. Hand over the humans and your punishment need only extend by fifty years."

One of the Judoon clenched its fists. "BO TRO FO!"

The Doctor attempted to maintain the facade. "It was our last reque—"

"BO TRO FO!"

No dice. The jig was clearly up. As the Doctor bit his lip, weighing up his next move, Rory sighed in annoyed exasperation. "Oh, let me."

He grabbed the firearm from Miranda's grasp, pressed the stock into his shoulder, and looked down its sights. The weapon clicked into action; a high pitched hum emanated from the device, and a brilliant blue light shone from the barrel. Armed and ready.

"Time for a blast from the past," he said.

"Rory, stop!" said the Doctor.

Rory pulled the trigger, and a thick pulse of electrical energy exploded from the barrel. It hit the armed Judoon square in the chest, sending thick blue sparks coursing around its body. There was a tense moment. Everyone looked, transfixed.

The Judoon looked down at the point of impact. It looked up at Rory.

"BO TRO FO!"

Rory looked puzzled. He examined the gun. "What?"

The Doctor grabbed his arm. "Come on!"

"But I—"

"Now!"

The Doctor dragged Rory into the TARDIS; Amy and Miranda quickly followed behind. The Shadow Architect's face contorted into pure anger. "You've marked your own death warrant, Doctor!" she boomed. "As have you, Miranda. You've sealed your own fate. The ends of the galaxy won't get you far enough from us. We'll find you. You know we'll find you!"

Amy closed the TARDIS door. "That's quite enough out of Her Majesty," she said. As the Doctor sprinted to the console and launched the craft into motion, Miranda looked around her surroundings, amazed.

"I'd heard, but I never imagined... this is..."

Rory approached the Doctor, still holding the firearm. "You picked up a dud," he said. "I hit that thing square in the chest, but nothing happened. It didn't faze him."

The Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and scanned the weapon from end to end.

"I even said a cool tough guy line and everything," Rory mumbled.

The Doctor's scanning lead him to a panel on the side, and he flicked it open to reveal a small panel of buttons and dials. "No wonder it didn't work. It was on the wrong setting."

"The wrong...?"

He sighed. "It's a genome blaster. Different settings for different species. You're an intergalactic enforcer of law — if you're taking down a target in a crowded area, you want to make sure you don't kill the wrong one. Setting the gun for your desired species means no accidental deaths, even if you miss. And this one, for obvious reasons, wasn't set to Judoon. It was set to..."

The Doctor trailed off. "It was set to Time Lord."

They all stared at the device. Rory, his mouth agape, looked between it and the Doctor. He was holding it gingerly now. The Doctor rescanned the gun with his screwdriver and inspected it for the results. "Instantaneous cellular shutdown. No regeneration. Can't say they weren't prepared."

He stood up, stowing his screwdriver back in his jacket pocket and eyed Rory with severe regard. "You be careful with that, tough guy." And he went back to the central console.

The Doctor rested his weight on the TARDIS controls, sighing heavily. He closed his eyes, giving himself some semblance of solitude as he worked through what had happened. What was yet to come. It felt heavy.

"I shouldn't be here," he mused.

Miranda approached his side. "You've just made a powerful enemy, doing what-what you did."

"So have you," he noted. "Blacklisted from the Proclamation, no doubt."

She nodded. "I'm now wanted by them as much-much as you. As all of you."

"So no-one would mind terribly if you came with us for a spell?"

"Where else would I go?"

Amy examined the monitor. "We're not going anywhere with this thing still on the blink. Look at it. It's frozen."

And it was. Still stuck on a screen of numbers that had swarmed its display. The Doctor frowned. "The TARDIS isn't in a habit of picking up HAM radio; these numbers have been detected for a reason. They mean something." He put a thoughtful finger to his chin. "But what?"

The Doctor peered in close, until his nose was barely touching the monitor's surface. He noticed something. The Doctor fiddled with a switch and a dial. Slowly. Delicately. Then with a touch more energy. Then he gave the monitor an almighty whack on the side. "Huh."

"Huh?"

He leaned back. "They're different."

"What?"

The Doctor pointed to the monitor. "These numbers. The signal has frozen, that much is obvious, yet the numbers have changed. Yes, yes, a photographic memory is a wonderful thing, I know. Saves you a fortune on photo albums. But these numbers are different to the numbers from before. As curious as the 'how' is, I'm more interested in the 'why'. Why would they need to change? They wouldn't. Unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless they needed to for us."

"I don't understand."

"Say you want to go to the shops. Your route there will change depending on whether you're leaving from your place or from the post office or from your third ex-girlfriend's brother-in-law's outhouse. Same destination, different directions."

Miranda looked at the screen. "The numbers are directions?"

"Galactic coordinates. Yes. But like none I've seen. I mean, look at them. Forwards, backwards, upside down… they're pointing to something that doesn't make sense. Even without the noise from parallel universes scattering the data, it's still data that doesn't compute. I can do some number crunching, but even with the power of the TARDIS it would take weeks. And we don't have weeks. If only we had some kind of..."

He looked at Miranda. "Some kind of super computer comprised of self-contained cell CPUs that communicate in a body-wide network via the brain core." The Doctor stepped towards her. "I need you to look at that screen. Examine those numbers. Tell me what you see."

"I don't know how-how I can..."

"Relax. There's no low-traffic anything here, trust me. I believe in you."

Miranda inhaled deeply and nodded her understanding. She turned and stared directly, intently, at the monitor. The irises of her eyes expanded, her expression remained blank. Passive. She blinked. Then again. Then faster and faster, until the movement of her eyelids became a blur. Miranda gazed at the screen as she took in the information before her, processing it via some unseen means. Amy and Rory looked on in disbelief. The Doctor steepled his fingers. Waiting. Not knowing when or how long it would—

A deep, heavy gasp. Miranda's mouth opened agape as her lungs scrambled desperately for air, like she'd just surfaced from deep underwater. She looked around at the Doctor, panting for breath, her face wearing an expression of what could only be described as pure wonder. Enlightenment. Her mind, it seemed, had been awoken to something entirely new.

Her fingers moving at a rapid speed, Miranda typed on the TARDIS keyboard embedded in the console. A new ream of information raced up the monitor, overlaying the old information. The display was cluttered, but the Doctor examined it.

"Are you sure this is right? These coordinates are way off. It's like they're pointing off the map."

"They're correct."

"But the velocity, the temporal flux it causes…"

The Doctor forced himself to pause. He took a moment to take in the data more fully. His eyes darted from left to right, then back again as he read the screen twice, three times. Almost imperceptibly, his mouth moved as he disassembled the data in his mind, considered what it meant. He pursed his lips. Something had sparked.

Something.

Out of the blue, he looked at Miranda and put an arm around her shoulder. "You don't look great. Let's get you out of here and sitting down somewhere."

"I'm alright, Doctor. Just a bit out of breath."

"I insist. You need to rest. Come on, let's go."

The Doctor walked Miranda away from the console and up the stairs, and the two disappeared beyond one of the TARDIS hallways. Rory sidled up to Amy.

"He's got a thing for her."

Amy smirked. "I don't know about a thing, but he certainly seems to care. You should have seen him when he first laid eyes on her. There she was, fumbling with a stapler, and there he was, forgetting how to close his mouth. It would have been cute if it wasn't so obvious."

Rory looked at Amy, gauged her passive expression. "You're not a fan, I take it."

She sighed. "It's not that. It's just weird, you know? Miranda nice and all, but shouldn't be here. She died. I saw it happen. This version is like, I don't know, an alternate Miranda. It's not the Miranda we met. And I'm not the Amy she met — according to her version of events, I'm the one that died. It all feels a bit strange."

"I know the feeling," said Rory.

"Which universe is the right one?" said Amy. "Ours? Hers? Neither? How can we ever make sense of our lives when they're made of infinite possibility? How can we be expected to believe that the choices we make are the right ones, when others choices are made outside of our control?"

"Maybe that's the key," said Rory. "To understand the chaos. Or to attempt to make some sort of order from it. Maybe simply being aware of it is what makes us human."

Footsteps. The Doctor flittered down the stairs and skittered back to the console. He bypassed Rory and Amy completely and trained his focus directly at the monitor.

"Is she okay?" said Amy.

"She'll be fine," said the Doctor. "Leave her be."

"Okay, no need to get snippy."

"I wasn't snippy. Was I snippy? I didn't mean to be snippy. What I did mean to be was thinky. So here's me thinking. And you know what I'm thinking?"

"What?"

"It's outside of time."

He pointed at the screen. "It's the only explanation. A delivery of ever-changing numbers from a frozen signal; numbers that form coordinates that extend far beyond the limits of our universe in terms of both space and time. Whoever or whatever sent them knows the workings of the TARDIS and wants us to come in for a visit."

"For a cup of tea and a chat, naturally," said Rory. "Come on, Doctor. How is this not a trap?"

"I think it's an invitation. And it'd be rude of us to ignore it."

"But you're not—"

"Rory, the universe and every universe around it is on the brink of total collapse. Space and time is going to end. Reality will be no more. This will happen if we don't do something to stop it. And you're suggesting we ignore the only lead we have?"

Silence. Rory didn't respond.

"It's this or nothing. These numbers, these directions, are going to send us over, under and through our little circle universe. These directions are designed to burst us through into an isolated plane of existence - a realm unto itself. We've got to go."

The Doctor rolled up his sleeves and frantically worked the controls of the TARDIS. "Hold on to your bedsocks," he said. "We're going beyond our universe. A spaceless space. Ladies and gentlemen, we're breaking through time."


	4. Family Ties

**CHAPTER 4: Family Ties**

With furious energy, the Doctor darted around each and every side of the TARDIS console, pressing and rotating a flurry of switches and dials. He addressed Rory and Amy, but kept his attention focused directly in front of him. "It's all hands on deck for this one," he said. "Amy, hold that lever there until I tell you. Rory, over here. Both hands on this. Firm grip. Don't let go. And me..."

The Doctor darted over to the central keyboard, where his fingers became a whirlwind as they typed in a series of commands. "I'm crossing every crossable thing that this works."

He punched in the final keystroke and heaved a nearby lever downwards. Instantly, the TARDIS came to life in a lurching shudder, the wheezing rhythm of the engines sounding more guttural, denser, than normal. If a look outside the craft were possible, it would be seen to be travelling through space at a blistering speed, spinning on its axis at a rate so fast that its shape was nothing more than an formless blur.

Inside, its occupants were thrown around every which way. Violent, jarring motions rocked the TARDIS, rapidly growing to take on a distinctly more dangerous edge. Even the Doctor, normally the one who would find a certain degree of delight in the rocky, roller-coaster movements of TARDIS travel, found himself beginning to sweat. This felt different. Dangerous.

The sound of the engines grew; Rory had to raise his voice to be heard over the racket. "Can't you make this thing less noisy?"

"And less bumpy?" said Amy.

The Doctor hastily swept his hair from his eyes. "This 'thing' was designed to travel through time and space. Time and space. We're going to a place that has neither. We're might as well be using a car to drive to the moon. So, please, pardon me if things jolt a bit more than usual."

As if on cue, the TARDIS vibrated violently, rattling its occupants. The Doctor steadied himself on his feet while Rory was nearly sent to the floor. He looked at the Doctor in exasperation. "Never a dull moment," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"Pointless if there were," said the Doctor.

The interior lights flickered. Sparks exploded from the console, sending a blinding stream of hot metal shards into the air. And somehow, from above, crackles of forked blue lightning boomed and crashed into the brass railing nearby. The impact was deafening. Amy screamed.

The Doctor continued to work the controls as his brow furrowed in frustration. "Oh dear. Wherever we're going, there's no red carpet - and by red carpet, I mean clear materialisation point. There's nowhere for us to land; it's all occupied somehow." He squinted at the monitor. "I can't make it out... some kind of dense forest, maybe? Or possibly a full car park? No, that doesn't sound right — wait, I'm picking up some sort of structure. Massive. Solid. Well, mostly solid. Somewhere inside it is a hollow area. A small room of some type. It's eye-of-the-needle stuff, but if I bring her in right, if the spacial distribution analysers haven't been fried, and if we're very, very lucky—"

"Just land!" screamed Amy.

"Oh, don't worry _—_ that's going to happen one way or another."

The Doctor put all his energy into steering and manipulating every piece of console equipment within reach. A massive groaning noise, like bending metal, reverberated throughout the TARDIS. As though the very structure of the craft was being stressed and bent to within a hair of breaking point. As though it was being pushed to the very limit. Beyond it.

"Rory, turn to the right!" The Doctor twisted two dials in tandem as he kept a close eye on the console monitor. "Amy! Flip that lever!"

Amid the mayhem they did as directed, and the TARDIS lurched at a sharp, sudden angle. The three scrambled to maintain their footing. "Hold on!" said the Doctor. "Almost... there..."

The lights went out. Total darkness.

An almighty crash shook the TARDIS from wall to wall; big and heavy, and full of a deep echo. It rang throughout the entire cabin, the sound lingering for what seemed like an eternity. It eventually faded, and for a moment, that was it. Nothing happened. Silence.

Then, gradually, finally, the lights faded back into their full brightness.

The Doctor, like Amy and Rory, found himself thrown to the floor of the TARDIS. He slowly picked himself up and straightened his jacket with shaking hands. "Anyone who isn't breathing, say something." A brief moment passed without an answer. "All breathing. Good. Whew. That was fun, wasn't that fun? I thought it was fun." The pretence did little to mask the tinge of apprehension that filtered into his voice. "But enough of the fun. We're here. Wherever 'here' is."

"Where's your best guess?" said Rory.

"Honestly, my best guess would be nowhere. We're off the map in pretty much every regard. A timeless realm. Which, in both the good way and the bad way, means we've got no time to lose." He called out over his shoulder. "Miranda! Come out here and be amazing."

Dainty footsteps sounded above as Miranda emerged from an upper corridor. She descended the stairs and joined the three at the console; her eyes lingered between Rory, the Doctor and Amy. Together, they approached the TARDIS doors, and between them, they could feel the tension build as they stood at the exit, waiting. The Doctor closed his fingers around the latch, preparing himself for whatever faced them on the other side. He looked among his friends. "Ready?"

Amy looked concerned. "What do we do if we—"

He didn't wait for an answer. The Doctor flung the door open, ready to pounce like a coiled spring, but was instead faced with little more than a dank, cold space of darkness and mildew. The only light came from what spilled out from the TARDIS interior, illuminating their surroundings just enough to reveal thick stone walls in all four directions, and an extremely low stone ceiling hanging just overhead. No ambush, no surprises. Just a dark, cold room, totally empty.

The Doctor put a tentative step outwards, peering his head left and right to take in what was on offer. "Hmm..." was all he said.

Rory and Amy emerged from behind him, and Miranda behind them. "Where are we?" she said. "It looks like a cave."

Rory put his hand to a wall. He brushed the stone surface, feeling it with his fingertips. "There's join seams between the stone. Like a grid."

"Eye of the needle," said the Doctor. "We're inside a building."

He produced his sonic screwdriver from a jacket pocket and lit the tip. A brilliant green hue helped to light the space further, affording the group a better look at their surroundings. Sure enough, the artificial construct of the stonework was evident, with blocks upon blocks conveying a clear sense of their deliberate placement.

The light also revealed a series of simple torches build into small recesses on the walls. The Doctor amplified the screwdriver, causing it to emit a high pitched electronic squeal. The effort caused the nearest torch to spontaneously combust, flickering to life in a solid orange flame. It caused a chain reaction; that torch sparked its neighbour alight, and the torch next to it, and so on, until bursts of fire wrapped around the entire room. The torches continued to ignite into a narrow hallway that was revealed towards the far wall, and as the light increased, it was shown to be more than a hallway - it was a staircase. Steep, narrow stairs climbed upwards in a tight spiral, and behind them, a second flight of a similar build went downwards.

The Doctor pocketed his screwdriver and gestured towards them. "Shall we let Yazz guide our way?"

Silence. Confusion. Amy, Rory and Miranda each stared at the Doctor in bewilderment.

"Yazz? The singer?' The Only Way Is Up'? 1988, biggest single of the year?" The Doctor sighed. "Oh, whatever. Up, up, let's go up. Blimey, you lot change your pop culture references more often than you change your socks."

Amy gave the Doctor a sympathetic pat on the arm. "You stick to saying things like 'Geronimo', grandad. Let us young pups take care of the rest."

Single file, with the Doctor in the lead, they began to climb the stairs. Tight confines gave the spiral a distinctly claustrophobic feel; each step was barely wider than their shoulders. Rory looked at his feet. "These stairs are so smooth," he said. "The stone... it's as though it's been worn down by thousands of feet."

"Since when were you the stone expert?" said Amy.

"Hush, puppies," said the Doctor over his shoulder. "There's an opening ahead."

The steps spiralled up to a square hole. One by one, they climbed up and out, emerging onto a massive open stone platform _—_ an enormous square, its surface unnaturally smooth and even, with edges that seemed to lead to a sheer drop on all sides. A pitch black sky loomed overhead, and a persistent wind blew through their hair. Evidentially, they were outside, and from their vantage point, it was clear that they were high up, towering above the ground atop this colossal structure. And the surface, big as it was, made them appear to be the size of ants in comparison.

Before them, built into the middle of the platform, was what appeared to be a giant stone capsule or bulb. It jutted up from the surface like a large cylinder, smoothed down all sides and rounded at the tip, and intermittently lit their surroundings with pulses of blue energy, fading in and out like a lung breathing light instead of air. There was no sound, and no evident power source. Just a glowing stone bulb, ominous and silent.

The Doctor approached it, his face one of pure fascination. "This is new," he said in wonder. He put his hand out to touch it _—_ cautiously at first, then resting his entire palm against the stone. Despite the light emanating from it, it felt cold to the touch. The Doctor cocked his head. "What are you, then? A beacon? An energy transmitter?"

In an effort to better gauge his surroundings, Rory toed his way to an edge of the platform. He looked down, his jaw agape as he realised just how far up they were, and he immediately reeled back from the edge. From their height, those things below looked like little—

He stopped, did a double take, and looked down again, then further out into the distance. They were there alright. Somehow. Rory blinked in amazement, not daring to believe his eyes. Not daring to believe what he saw.

Amy joined his side. "What does the stone expert have to say about this grand specimen?" she said, her voice woven with playful teasing.

Rory answered by pointing into the horizon. Amy followed his finger. She looked. She gasped.

"Doctor! You need to see this right now!"

Her voice echoed into the vast nothingness, loud and urgent. The Doctor stepped back from the pulsating blue bulb and joined Amy and Rory at the edge of the platform, with Miranda following him behind. "What's the fuss?" he said.

Amy looked at the Doctor; she was in the midst of processing what her brain was on the verge of disregarding as pure fantasy. "What's the plural of TARDIS?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Well, I don't know. TARDII? TARDISes? I've never had more than one. Why do you ask?"

She took a step to the side, allowing him to take in the full view of what laid before them. "You've got more than one now."

The Doctor looked out into the distance. He froze on the spot, his brain searched desperately for the right words. It couldn't find them. Instead, it settled for the simplest; the first ones it landed on.

"My... horseradish..."

A faint glowing haze, right down at ground level, extended as far as the eye could see _—_ and even though their height put them far above it, there was no mistaking the source. Stretching from the base of the stone structure right out to the horizon, in every direction, was a sprawling mass of TARDISes. A sea of colours and patterns differentiated them _—_ a red TARDIS, a black TARDIS, a metal TARDIS, an army camouflage TARDIS _—_ yet all of them bore the same distinctive shape, one nestled against the next, totally filling every square inch of land.

The same police box, in a host of different designs, repeated into infinity.

Miranda, Rory, Amy and the Doctor all stared open-mouthed at the array. And then, suddenly, a scratchy voice cut into the depths of their thoughts with one single word:

" _Welcome._ "

The voice sounded crackled. Ancient, but far from frail. It sounded as though it was speaking through frayed vocal cords which, either by design or accident, gave it a definite twist of malevolence. Like twisted nails down a scratched blackboard.

The Doctor looked around them. The voice seemed as though it was coming from every direction at once. From within their heads as well as outside them. "Who said that?"

" _We are not a who. We are eternal. And we welcome your arrival._ "

"Doctor, that voice," said Amy. "It's in my head."

"Mine too," said Miranda.

"It's everywhere," Rory said.

"We were summoned," said the Doctor. "We've only arrived here because were given directions to come. Directions from you, I take it."

" _Indeed. We require you. We have always required you._ "

The Doctor looked around. "What's this 'we' business? Is there more than one of you?"

" _We are single, but many. We are eternal. We have always been._ "

He raised his tone as he addressed the empty air. "What is this place?"

" _The place where you find yourself, ever and always._ "

"Great," said the Doctor. "Another cryptic Carol."

" _We are not a cryptic Carol. We are—_ "

"Yeah, you're eternal, and a humourless one at that. I've had wrong numbers that were more entertaining than you. Alright, let me give you an easy one." He pointed into the distance, at the landscape that stretched into the horizon - at the thousands upon thousands of TARDISes, each with their different colours and patterns. He spoke with attitude, with a demanding tone; one that was longer entertaining a conversation of roundabouts.

"Explain _that_."

A tense moment passed without response. Amy and Rory exchanged wary glances. The Doctor remained posed, still pointing. Still waiting for an explanation. Then, in a raspy crackle, the voice spoke a simple, familiar phrase:

" _Silence will fall._ "

For a time on June 26 2010, no one was present in the TARDIS. Should anyone have been inside, they would have heard that voice speaking that very phrase as a telltale crack splintered across the TARDIS monitor. The Doctor, however, was not. But even so, he knew those words. His eyes went wide. "What?"

" _You, Doctor. You always were, and ever will be, the harbinger of time's destruction. And we always have, and ever will have, one sole purpose: to prevent it. An order of our design has spent an eternity on efforts to save existence from you. And we believe you have now seen how desperate they've become. Yet you fail to see the bigger picture."_

"The bigger picture?"

" _You know of the cracks, of the ruptures throughout all of time and space. You know of the infinite number of parallel universes that are threatening to collapse into each other through those cracks. But you do not know what has always needed to happen in order to prevent it."_

The faint haze from the horizon pulsated, lighting up the landscape and truly revealing the sheer volume of craft that occupied every square inch of land. " _Your TARDIS. A craft that exists within the very fabric of time itself. Such power is the only thing that can be harnessed as a means to resist the collapse of a stream of infinite worlds. And the more parallel universes that are created, the more TARDIS energy is needed to keep the collapse at bay. Fitting, then, that every universe comes with its own version of your craft."_

Rory stepped forward, addressed the clear sky. "Wait. So you lured us here, just so you can use the energy of the TARDIS?"

" _I only gave you the means to come,_ " said the voice. " _It was always your destiny to arrive. Universes upon universes of possibilities ever are and always will be... yet invariably, you find your way here. You always have. You always will._ "

"You're an unstoppable force against an immovable object," said Miranda. "You attract TARDISes so you can use them-them to barricade reality against the collapse of parallel worlds. But to prevent the collapse you need parallel worlds to exist so you can-can attract their TARDISes." She stared in amazement. "You're destined to do this-this forever."

" _And we have done,_ " said the voice. " _And so we will continue to do._ "

"You blew up my TARDIS," said the Doctor, finally finding the right words. "'Silence will fall'. It was you. You blew it up _—_ you caused these cracks."

" _An order of our design—_ "

"You caused the leaks from one parallel universe into the next. This is your fault. And now you need my TARDIS to stop them?"

" _We have needed the energy of your TARDIS long before its destruction was ever a notion. Effect before cause. Surely a Time Lord of all people knows how that works._ "

"I know a lot of things," said the Doctor. "I'm clever that way. And you know what else is clever? Not handing my TARDIS over to any old voice in the sky. You said so yourself: universes upon universes of possibilities. What if I'm from the one where the Doctor says no?"

" _Look around you. TARDIS after TARDIS, each from a different parallel universe. You come here, every time. Every time you learn of the consequences, and every time you acknowledge the need to surrender. Every time it is the same._ " A pause. " _But not this time._ "

A pause. All eyes were on the Doctor.

" _The woman. She is not of a species. She is new. This... confuses us._ "

And with those words, all eyes were immediately on Miranda.

She looked among the group, felt their penetrating gaze. For a brief moment she shrunk into her shoulders, as though trying to shy away from the sudden barrage of scrutiny. She looked around her, then up at the sky, as she tried to figure out where to address an unseen, ever-present voice. "Even TARDISes from parallel universes need to have-have a Doctor piloting them," she said, the effort an apparent move to change the subject. "So if all those TARDISes out there are belong-belong to alternate versions of the Doctor... how did they all leave?"

"Effect before cause?" said Amy. "Time doesn't seem to have any place here, so maybe the TARDISes are here before their journey has begun?" She paused. "Or something. This timey-wimey business is too wibbly-wobbly."

The voice only replied with a twisted cackle.

The Doctor was musing through a rapid stream of thoughts. "Power... timeless plane... entity..." He finally settled on an idea.

"You've got infinite universes at your fingertips, assuming you have fingertips. Infinite TARDISes for you to use _—_ TARDISes that could be anywhere and anywhen at any given moment. TARDISes that you need to track down and lure to your little timeless playpen. So tell me, Carol, how did you send those numbers? I mean, how did you find me at all?"

Another cackle. Clearly, the voice was revelling in its knowledge.

" _Just as a Time Lord has a connection to his TARDIS, we have a connection to the Time Lord. A direct link. A bond. One that ties directly to you in heart, mind, body and soul. After all, who better to find a Time Lord than one of his own?_ "

With those words, the sound of stone grinding against stone filled the air. The group looked behind them to see the giant bulb, still pulsating with blue energy, slowly moving upwards, as though it was being pushed from below. As it rose, its form was better revealed: the bulb was solid and rounded at the top, but tapered at the base to a diamond-like point supported by two vertical stone beams. Between those beams, beneath the diamond point, was a stone chair. And sitting in that chair, tightly secured by a tangled mess of copper wires coursing with wild blue energy, was a person.

A woman.

She was writhing in pain, thrashing her head from left to right. A head of short black hair, cut to a tidy fringe. Wearing a simple grey shirt, fitted with a round high black collar.

It had been years. Centuries. It had been ten regenerations since he had seen that woman. Ten regenerations since he had uttered her name. But in an instant, in the coldest pang of shock that could slam into his stomach, the Doctor knew exactly who she was.

"Susan," he whispered.

" _Yes_ ," said the voice, barely restraining a gleeful cackle. " _Your... own... granddaughter_."


	5. Eternally Yours

**CHAPTER 5: Eternally Yours**

" _Your… own… granddaughter_."

Rory and Amy looked at each other, their mouths open in disbelief. That word, that revelation. Was it true? Amy turned to the Doctor, seeking some form of clarification, but his expression said it all. Dumbfounded shock. Bewilderment.

And somehow, beneath it all, a hint of disappointment.

The woman, Susan, didn't hear the voice - couldn't hear it - over her own screaming. She continued to writhe in pain, struggling desperately against her bonds. An eternal prisoner in eternal torment.

Rory turned to Amy. "Is that... is she really..."

"Whoever she is," said Amy, "we need to get her out of there."

" _You'll do no such thing,_ " said the voice, a sharper tone. " _The subject needs to continue to attract parallel TARDISes. Her link to the Doctor is the only thing that is preventing time and space from eternal implosion._ "

"But look at her!" said Amy. "You're hurting her."

" _We are doing what is necessary. If you remove her, you remove all hope of maintaining the existence of reality. And we will not accept that._ "

As if on cue, a distant shuffling drew ever closer as dozens of footsteps ascended the worn rock stairs. Emerging up and out onto the stone platform was a large group - about twenty or thirty men, each looking wildly different to the next. One appeared to be wearing a stovepipe hat and purple silk cravat; next to him, a man outfitted in a plaid safari suit; and to his side, a man in a striped T-shirt and a loose black necktie. One was tall and lean; the next round in the face; the next sporting a big nose and jug ears. Black hair, blonde hair, red hair. Long, short, cropped, bald. Different outfits, different appearances. And all stood passive, each wearing a distant, glazed expression on their faces.

" _Stranger,_ " said the voice. " _Your earlier statement. There are indeed Doctors from parallel universes. And here they remain._ "

Then they noticed it: the group's eyes. They were white. No colour. Just pair after pair of plain white eyes that stared soullessly ahead.

" _Universes upon universes of infinite possibilities,_ " said the voice, barely bothering to hide its wicked laughter. " _Each one has its own version of you, Doctor, yet each one is nothing like you. The variables, the decisions, the things left to pure chance... everything has resulted in a version of you that is totally and completely unique. Completely unique, and completely under my control. Behold, the Doctors of the multiverse!_ "

As one united front, the group slowly began to move forward towards the four, slowly backing together into a huddle. They weren't given much room to move; Amy looked behind her to see her feet inching uncomfortably closer to the edge of the stone platform, moments away from a sheer drop into distant black and blue. She looked desperately around for an idea, a way forth. She looked towards the Doctor — his expression was still one of stunned wonder.

Susan.

His granddaughter.

"Oy! Doctor!"

Amy called for his attention, firm and sharp. Snapped out of his thoughts, he looked towards her and immediately regained his focus. He appeared determined now, and turned his attention to the oncoming mass. "Such incredible power," he said. "And for what? To use your army of indoctrinated puppets as a means of intimidation?" He raised his voice as he spoke into the air. "You're a cheap sideshow act."

The voice chuckled. "' _Indoctrination'. How curious it is that you use that word. Would you like to know where it comes from?_ "

The Doctor didn't answer.

" _It comes from the control of you._ "

Immediately, the Doctor's body became rigid. His arms became bolt stiff, his back arched tight by an unseen force. Every muscle in his body was stretched taught, immobile, as he clenched his eyes tightly shut. At the same time, a furious stream of white lightning crackled around the array restraining Susan in place. She screamed in unbearable pain.

Through gritted teeth, through a jaw clenched shut, the Doctor managed to speak two muffled words:

"Help... me..."

And he opened his eyes. They were lit with a fiery white light.

Miranda looked at the Doctor, then at Susan. The white light continued to crackle around her confines. The Doctor appeared to be resisting the power surging through him, but despite his best efforts, despite how much he fought it, he began to move jerkily forward, as though controlled by an unseen hand. His eyes, white and glowing with a brilliant light, stared ahead as he slowly, through jagged movements, approached the group of similarly controlled Doctor incarnations.

Miranda turned to Rory and Amy and pointed to Susan, still shackled to the array. "Get her-her out of there. She's being used to control them. Break the link and-and get her out."

"What about you?" said Amy. "What are you going to do?"

Miranda took a deep breath. "What I need to do."

Rory pulled Amy by the shirtsleeve. "Come on," he said, and the two raced towards Susan.

Miranda shifted her feet on the stone surface. Her gaze flicked from one approaching threat — from one Doctor — to the next. She tightened her lips and bent her knees. Preparing. Bracing herself.

It didn't take long. One Doctor took a meaty swing at her head; instinct took over as she quickly, nimbly, arched her back away from its reach, feeling the whoosh of air pass over her face. Like a coiled spring, she snapped back upright and twirled on a heel, sending a powerful foot right into that Doctor's head. The impact was loud, the effect immediate - he dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, limp. A second Doctor approached her from the side and made a clumsy punch to her midsection; she deftly intercepted the blow by clenching her hand around the wrist and, tightening her grip, made a swift jarring motion that caused the bones inside to crack as though they were made of brittle clay. The Doctor howled in pain, but his cries turned to a strained gargle by a direct punch to the throat. He dropped to his knees, clenching his neck with his remaining good hand, but to no avail - his windpipe smashed, the Doctor fell face first to the stone surface.

Miranda bobbed on her legs, readying herself for more. She didn't see the three Doctors that approached her from behind, one hooking his arm around her neck in a tight headlock, while the others grabbed an arm each, preventing further movement. She struggled against them, trying to work herself free, but as she did so, she saw the two crumpled bodies on the ground.

She noticed the light.

One of the bodies had started to shine, as though from the inside, with a distinct orange energy that wrapped throughout its entire form. A mist, almost, that seemed to gather in strength and vibrance. The second body began to display similar activity - a strong orange light emanating from the very core of the body and filtering down into wisps that escaped through the extremities — the head and the hands. A very faint hum, high in pitch, resonated throughout each body, and from the first it hit a crescendo - the orange light exploded, a blinding light that cast outwards in vibrant streams. The second body soon followed suit, the combined light so bright that Miranda couldn't help but squint her eyes in reflex. Yet she never looked away. Couldn't look away.

The bodies. They were changing.

As she continued to struggle against her captors, Miranda's heart dropped in her chest. She'd read about this, she realised. She heard the legend. She knew what the Doctor, a native Gallifreyan, was capable of. What, it seemed, he was capable of across every parallel universe. She'd just never witnessed it until now.

Regeneration.

"Amy! Rory! You need-need to hurry!"

Standing at the exposed stone bulb, at the array that held Susan within its tight restraints, they looked for a means to free the woman. It seemed impossible: wires connected to wires in a tangled mess of copper, while Susan's restraints held her in the chair with unreserved force. The restraints pressed against her skin, allowing no room for movement whatsoever. Susan continued to scream; she barely registered the presence of Rory and Amy by her side, and they looked at her with equal amounts of concern and alarm.

"How do we get her out?" said Amy. "There's no switch or lock or anything."

"We make like Venice," said Rory. And he grabbed a handful of copper wiring and gave it a firm pull, disconnecting it from its housing and sending sparks flying out of the exposed mechanism.

Amy reeled back from the sudden shower, and smiled. She followed suit — she leaned over to grip the nearest bundle of wires and pulled back, hard. More sparks exploded forth, and the light emanating from the bulb started to gradually fade. They continued their efforts, pulling and disrupting as much of the mechanism as they could, until the whole array shuddered and spluttered into darkness, and as Susan stopped screaming, the restraints clicked open.

Among the fighting horde, amid the dozens of bodies clamouring to subdue Miranda, the Doctor stopped. He blinked, shook his head. The white glow from his eyes had vanished, and he looked around as though he was using them for the first time. He allowed himself a moment to refocus, then snapped to attention — he rushed over to Rory and Amy and proceeded to help them uncouple Susan from her restraints.

"This thing," he gasped, motioning to the structure. "That voice. Such power. I've never felt anything like it. I was lucky — it only had me for a moment, but it's had them for far longer. Even with this thing disabled, they're still under control. Their minds have been lost too long."

Susan's lungs heaved in desperate breaths as she looked around her, then at Amy and Rory. And the Doctor.

"What... what's happening? Who are you?"

"We're friends," said Amy. "And we're getting you out of here."

Rory and the Doctor gently lifted Susan to her feet, each hoisting an arm over their shoulders and supporting her frail body between them. Ahead, the fighting mass continued its battle against Miranda. She had freed herself from her captors and was in the throes of combat, effortlessly flowing from one opponent to the next, every punch and kick linked together in a constant stream of motion. She didn't stop. She couldn't stop. The throng was relentless, and each time one of its members fell, it wasn't long before the telltale orange energy enveloped it, and exploded outwards in a brilliant display of light as it picked itself up with a brand new face and body. Regeneration after regeneration. An infinite supply of regenerating Doctors.

And all of them against Miranda.

The Doctor looked at her. One woman fighting off a swarm of regenerating foes. She practically glided from one to the next, chaining together move after fluid move. A gap in the combat gave Miranda enough time to see the Doctor beckon Amy forth, and he traded places so that she and Rory supported Susan between them. Miranda jerked her head towards the open hole where the stairs descended into the depths of the stone structure. "Take her!" she shouted. "Go!"

One by one, they slowly made their way down. They disappeared into the blackness, and once she saw they were gone, Miranda stared right at the Doctor, locking her eyes onto his. She fended off an approaching attacker, struggling against his grip as she spoke loudly, firmly. She made sure he heard her words.

"You know what you need-need to do! Now do it!"

The Doctor's his expression said it all. There was no misunderstanding. He held Miranda's gaze for a moment, then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

"I'll never forget you," he said.

The Doctor began to make his way down the stairs as Miranda turned her full attention back to the fighting horde. As he descended, his eyes never left her. He continued to watch Miranda until the stairs dropped him below the level of the upper platform, down into the stone spiral.

That woman, he thought. That wonderful woman. Destined to fight for eternity.

The Doctor descended the stairs, one by one, then two, three at a time as his pace increased. The tight confines of each opposing wall seemed closer than he remembered. He kept up the pace, rushing down the spiral, when a thick stone block at head height suddenly jutted out from one of the walls, the movement sending a spray of thick dust into the air. The Doctor barely had enough time to react; he ducked down and moved underneath the block's new position, and as he did so, a second larger block moved out from the opposing wall, this one at his feet. He deftly skipped over it, but his brow began to furrow — he wouldn't be leaving without a fight.

" _You can't stop us, Doctor,"_ said the voice. Its crackled tone echoed from within the stone itself. _"You can't run from fate!_ "

Faster now, more blocks were pushed into the Doctor's path, and desperately, frantically, he scrambled to avoid them. At chest height, one particularly large block pushed out in such a way that he was forced to shimmy past sideways, his back pressed right against the wall. From left and right, they continued to assault him, continued to impede his progress, but eventually he neared the bottom of the staircase, making a final, dramatic leap over a large stone that pushed out at waist height.

" _The burden is on your shoulders! You, and you alone, have condemned existence to death! May you forever wear the consequences..._ "

The voice practically spat out its final words with palatable distaste.

" _...Time Lord._ "

With an almighty shout, The Doctor vaulted over the block, landing with a clumsy thud into the room where the TARDIS stood, its doors open. He scuttled into the craft; the others were already inside, and he headed straight to the console. Deft fingers danced across a range of buttons and levers, and with a quick flick of a wrist, he set the rotor into motion, its signature wheezing sound indication enough that the TARDIS was on the move.

The Doctor rested his weight on the panel, gathering heaves of breath deep into his lungs, when he realised: save for the TARDIS and his own breathless gasps, the cabin was completely silent. He looked up to see Amy and Rory standing in place, their eyes trained on Susan. They watched her; she was looking at her surroundings in pure fascination.

"This place..." she said. She eyed the time rotor, the six-sided console. "This is... but it can't be..." She turned to Rory and Amy. "Who are you really?"

Amy turned to the Doctor. "What happened to Miranda? You're not going to just leave her there."

The Doctor didn't respond. His silence said it all.

"But why?"

"She made her decision," said the Doctor, his voice perilously close to an angry snap. "She had her reasons. Don't let her sacrifice be undone by petty arguing."

"I'm not arguing, I'm just after an explanation. Like why you get to decide who stays and who goes; that'd be a good place to start. Oh, but an even better place would be that time when I called you granddad, and when you didn't bother to tell us that you actually _were_ a grandfather. Why don't we start there?"

Susan looked up. "Grandfather?" She looked at the Doctor, puzzled. A moment passed, and her eyes gradually widened. Her expression was one of pure astonishment, incredulity. She peered at the Doctor.

"Grandfather? Is it you?"

The Doctor made no effort to answer. He didn't need to. Susan didn't need him to. She could see the answer before her, and her face dawned into wonder.

"Goodness! But why did you... you look so young!"

"A lot has changed," said the Doctor. His voice was monotone; clearly, he was unsure as to how he should be reacting to this woman's presence.

"I should say." Susan continued to stare at the Doctor, but broke her gaze long enough to better take in her surroundings. "Why, this is like no TARDIS I've ever seen!"

"It's no TARDIS you should ever see," he said, busying himself with the console controls. "All this, all of us, me… it's all from a time that you should never have had anything to do with. You being here... it's not how this is supposed to work. You grow up, you move on. You settle into a new life. You don't..."

He thumped the console and shook his head. "You don't get dragged back into it."

Rory put a hand on Susan's shoulder. "How did you come to that place, anyway?"

She looked at him, gave his question considerable thought. "Why, I don't know. It feels like I've always been there, and yet... it feels like I've only been there for the briefest of moments."

Amy stepped closer. "What do you remember that wasn't anything to do with being locked in that chair?"

"Lots of things. I remember my old school teachers. I remember Morphoton, the Aztecs, being shrunk..." She turned to the Doctor. "And I remember you leaving."

"You know I had to," he said.

"You decided to. You didn't have to leave at all." Susan sighed in exasperation. "Do you know how much I missed you, grandfather? How much I yearned to see you again? It's all I could ever think about — that one day you would come back, and the TARDIS doors would open, and things would continue once more. But they didn't. Weeks turned into months, and years, and they didn't. You asked me to believe that was the right decision, but..."

Her voice stumbled, and she began to cry.

The Doctor stood there, impassive. A brief moment passed where he simply watched her tears. "And it's that yearning," he said, "that powerful feeling of hope and need and desire, that was harnessed and used across time and space. You were weak."

"Doctor!" said Amy, aghast. "She's your own flesh and blood."

"You were weak," he said again. He approached Susan slowly, weighed up his reaction. "You put your emotions first. Throughout the years you held onto those hopes and dreams, living for the future but never forgetting the past. You never dared to stop believing. Never dared to stop hoping."

He gradually opened his arms and pulled her body close to his chest. He put his cheek against hers, skin to skin. "You should know better than that." He pulled back so he could address her directly, eyes looking directly into hers.

"You truly are my granddaughter."

There it was. The acknowledgement. Through the tears, Susan smiled. She sniffed. "It's so strange," she said. "To see you this way."

Rory smirked. "What's stranger is to imagine this guy as a grandfather."

"Oh, I've had a bit of work done over the years," said the Doctor. "Don't let the renovations fool you. There's decent mileage here."

Amy shook her head, not buying the Doctor's light-hearted explanation. "All this time," she said. "You never mentioned anything."

The Doctor released his embrace and turned his attention back to the TARDIS console. "Too much to tell. But anyway, the abridged version is standing right there."

Susan looked between Rory and Amy. "And are they... are you my brother and sister?"

Rory burst out with a snort of laughter, and Amy couldn't help but to follow; the nervous energy fed into laughs big and long. "No, no, no, no," said Rory, gasping. "I'm her husband. Rory."

"And I'm Amy." She pointed to the Doctor. "I'm his... we're travel buddies. Strictly."

"You're humans?"

"Last time we checked, yeah."

The Doctor stood away from the array of controls. "They're a good people, Susan. You should know. And right now every single one of them, and their infinite parallel selves, are on the edge of non-existence. Every planet. Every species. Every star system. Every thought that has ever and will ever be conjured will never—"

"The universe is imploding into other universes," said Rory, partially for Susan's benefit. "Stuff's collapsing. Long story."

"The question is, what do we do about it?" said Amy.

"The only thing we can do," said the Doctor. "Move things back to where they belong. Parallel universes are overlapping; it's up to us to de-lap them."

"But how? You said that would take a force of unimaginable power, and I'm not sure your screwdriver's got enough juice for this one."

The Doctor shook his head. A serious air overcame him. "No. Not my screwdriver. A paradox."

The group sensed the sudden change in tone, and waited for him to continue.

"I was wrong," the Doctor said. "Back in that cell. I did say we'd need a force massive enough to move universes. I said we wouldn't find it in there. But wouldn't you know it, it was in there all along. And don't worry about the whole splitting-off-into-another-parallel-universe thing that goes with this sort of territory. Give me two bits of string and a piece of copper wire, and we can work around that little road bump."

Amy's heart skipped a beat. "Wait, rewind a bit. What are you—"

"A paradox. Not just any old paradox, but a paradox of immeasurable scope. One that has seen the stars from end to end. One that has filtered through past, present, and future events. The one thing that has intertwined itself through time so much for so long that its removal would be cataclysmic." He looked at Amy. "It could only ever be one thing."

Amy's eyes went wide. "No..."

"We need to go back," he said. "Back to a time when a foolish old man was preparing to steal a mysterious box. Before the stars were ever tainted by his stupid whims and ideas. We need to go back to that time. And we need to prevent it."

The Doctor turned to the group. "The ultimate paradox. We need to kill my first incarnation."


	6. Sins of the Grandfather

**CHAPTER 6: Sins of the Grandfather**

The Doctor's proposition was greeted with ashen faces. Was that really his plan? To go back in time and destroy his past self? Did he really think that would resolve this situation? To the three before him, it couldn't have been a more drastic option. "Doctor," said Amy. "No. You can't do that. There must be another way."

"There is no other way," he replied. "And you know it as well as I do. TARDIS, your front garden, me in tails, you in white. An anomaly was detected — me, existing when I shouldn't. Alive when I should be dead. It was always going to happen. Well..." He took a deep breath. "This is the moment when it does happen. This is the beginning of that moment."

"The beginning of the end?" Amy was incredulous. "No, you don't need to do this!"

"I'm wrapped throughout time, Amy. Throughout all of history. I've involved myself in too much for too long. Remove me right from the start, before any of this ever had a chance to happen, and a chain reaction of interlinked paradoxes will occur from end to end, star to star. The ripples will build to a critical mass, releasing a force of space-time energy that should be enough to blast every—"

"But what about you? What good is a universe — any universe — without you?" Amy didn't care for an explanation. "Doctor, you're a time traveller! You can change this! You can change your future!"

The Doctor regarded Amy sympathetically, and tried to respond with a gentle tone. "And for what? Save myself so the universe can collapse? Save myself so every universe that has ever and will ever exist can implode into the very fabric of reality? Surely one stupid man in a box is a small price to pay so that time and space can continue to exist."

"I don't understand," said Susan. "Who are you talking about?"

The Doctor looked at the young woman, and his hearts sank — clearly, her involvement in a matter ten regenerations before her time put her closer to the man he once was, rather than the man he now embodied. He approached Susan and gently put his hands on her shoulders, his arms taught and braced between them, forcing her to look him in the eye.

"Me," he said. There was no getting around it. "Younger me. Well, older-looking me." He inhaled deeply. "Your me."

A moment passed before the Doctor's words registered in her mind, and Susan's face warped into an expression of horror. "You mean you're going to... oh, but you can't! You mustn't!"

"I must. I have to."

Amy stepped forward. "Well, I won't let you." She looked at Susan. "We won't let you."

The Doctor sighed. These humans. These complex, yet simplistic creatures. They were too short-sighted, not letting themselves see what needed to be done just so they could hang on to what they wanted to have. Their emotions always got in the way. Intentionally or otherwise, they served as a shield. An excuse.

But then he thought of Susan — his own kind, reacting in kind. Why could she, of all people, not see? Why could she not understand? Had she spent too long with humans? Probably. But then he himself had been by their side just as long. He'd fought for them, defended them. Loved them.

These humans. He had loved them.

His throat felt thick, and the Doctor swallowed hard. He suddenly grew aware of the true impact of his plan. He pictured faces, sad and lost. Hundreds of them. Thousands. But then, just as swiftly, he pictured an imaginary wind blowing them into grains of sand; he couldn't let them get in the way of what he knew had to be done. He needed to convince the humans of more than the simple end-game. He needed to have them see how he saw. To know what he knew.

A simple explanation wouldn't cover it. They needed to arrive there themselves.

"Amy," said the Doctor. His voice was calm, even. "Susan. Every parallel universe that has ever and will ever be is collapsing inward, breaking the fabric of reality and tearing apart time and space. Infinite existence will be crushed into a timeless nothingness. I want you to picture that. I want you to feel that in your mind. And I want you to think about what you could do to prevent it."

Amy said nothing. Nor did Susan.

"Because you can do something," said the Doctor. "You have the means. You just need to think. Picture how it looks. Picture those circles closing in on each other. There they are, moving in closer and closer. You need to push them apart. How would you do that? Think of the obvious."

Amy bit her lip. She didn't want to answer. "By force," she mumbled. "An explosion."

"An explosion. Yes. But think how massive that explosion would need to be. Think of the power it needs to have in order to literally move countless universes away from each other. Raw physical power won't be enough; it would need to transcend the physical and draw from something far greater. Something deeper. Something that, from the perspective of the universe, has been there from start to finish. Influencing. Guiding. Shaping. The course of time has been structured the way it has because of this thing — it's like a support beam, a tentpole that gives it its form."

The Doctor paused. "That tentpole is me."

An empty moment passed. The analogy was clear, but Amy's face remained still, unconvinced. She cleared her throat to speak, apparently giving much thought to whether or not to do so.

"You're a wonderful man," she finally said. She looked at Rory. "The second most wonderful man I know. But right now, it's not you who's talking. It's your ego. Doctor, you've been doing this for so long, seeing so many places and changing the lives of so many people, that right now, looking back on it all and looking at what lies ahead, you really do see yourself as the centre of the universe. You really think you're this great all-important figure. This great presence that the universe owes itself to. The Doctor, the big man in the box."

Inwardly, the Doctor bristled. _Ego_.

"I really don't need to look at that way," he said gently, "but can you think of a bigger one? Can you think of any one thing that has touched all corners of time and space in a fashion that comes even remotely near what I've done?" He turned to Susan, to make sure she was hearing his words also. "I've been up to a fair bit. More than any Time Lord has the right to involve themselves in. Influencing species, shaping history. Becoming part of events that are yet to be, moulding and shaping moments from long ago." He sighed. "I've done too much. This... perhaps this always needed to happen."

"You're no martyr," Amy said. "If this is just about absolving a nagging case of centuries-old guilt—"

"—I'm not—"

"Then think about why you feel you need to do anything at all!"

The Doctor was taken aback. He didn't expect that. "How can you ask such a question? After all you've seen? If I have the means to help, why shouldn't I use them?"

"Because you're my friend!"

And Susan, with wide eyes and a trembling lip, added in a voice barely louder than a whisper:

"Because you're my grandfather."

The Doctor took a moment to regard their responses. There they were. There was the honest truth. Those words, driven with such passion and emotion, finally hit home.

The Doctor smiled.

"And that's exactly why I need to help," he said.

Cautiously, Rory waved a hand into the conversation. "I, uhh, I know I'm not an expert in time travel or anything," he said, "but you're talking about travelling back to change the past, and I do seem to remember you saying that paradoxical events split off to become parallel universes."

"Correct, but then there was that other thing I said, about how we can work around it. An extremely clever thing, if I do say so." The Doctor seemed to regain some upbeat energy, as though the challenge fuelled his mood. "'Course, when I said two bits of string and a piece of copper wire, I meant something a bit more complicated."

"How complicated?"

The Doctor started pacing around the TARDIS console. "Any event that conflicts with the past, present or future will split off to create its own de-paradoxed parallel universe. It's just how things are. So we need to prevent that split. We need to contain the paradox. A barrier, or a bubble, around the universe would keep the anomaly in a place where the point of conflict can generate the paradox and prevent timey-wimey from siphoning it outwards into parallel safety. A new twist on an old trick I learned from an even older friend." He looked at his audience and caught himself. "Long story."

"A bubble?" said Susan.

"Around the whole universe?" said Amy.

The Doctor nodded.

"But what good would that do?" Rory said. "Why contain it? So the barrier prevents a time split from escaping. So what?"

"So what? So everything! A universe that's both with and without me is a big thumping huge paradox with plenty of universe-shifting oomph, and like any oomph, if it's contained, it will want to escape. The pressure will keep building and building until it breaks through our barrier — and that's precisely the force we need. Massive, universal, eternal. Or, to put it a tastier way, it's the fizz in a soda bottle — fine by itself, but shake it up and it'll blast the top off and go all over that nice rug. So, really, we're bottling the universe."

Amy snorted incredulously. "You make it sound so easy."

"Well, it is."

"The whole universe? With what, a balloon and sticky tape?"

"Of course not. With this." He patted the TARDIS console tenderly. "She's not just for travel, you know. We can use the energy of the TARDIS to generate a time shield; one that exists at every point in history, in every point in space. That's the plan, at least. End to end and beyond. But as capable as this ol' girl is, we're going to need more power to do it. A lot more. As much as we can get. And the good thing is, we already have it."

He flicked on the display monitor, and a sharp burst of static gave way to reveal a familiar sight: an endless horizon of police boxes, stretching as far as the eye could see. "Hundreds, thousands, millions of energy-laden ol' girls," said the Doctor. "Thanks to a timeless realm and our good friend Carol, we have an infinite supply of parallel TARDISes."

Susan, Rory and Amy could't help but smile as they craned in to look. Sure enough, the array offered an eternal field of powered units, all active and all glowing the same blue hue.

"We can use them," said the Doctor. "Every single one of them, together. With a bit of jiggery-pokery, we can chain-link all those TARDISes together — one into two, two into four, four into eight, eight into sixteen, and so on. An infinite stream of TARDIS energy, which gets fed back into this TARDIS and broadcast as a shield that's big enough to cover our entire universe, with more than enough juice left over to break through the time lock. Another long story."

His plan laid bare, he didn't waste any time. Immediately, the Doctor raced down the TARDIS platform stairs and examined the underside of the structure, a baffling array of exposed cables, wires, and electrical equipment. The others, in an effort to keep up with his supercharged mind, had no choice but to follow.

The Doctor frantically worked his way through the array, unplugging cables and reconnecting them elsewhere at a blistering speed. "Normally it's a bad idea to loop TARDIS energy into TARDIS energy," he said, disconnecting and reconnecting. "But since we've already taken this girl beyond the reaches of time and space and we're living to talk about it, I'm feeling lucky."

Rory raised an eyebrow. "Lucky?"

"Still, daisy chaining these things is going to take some serious heavy duty hardware. Give me two bits of string and a piece of copper wire."

"Wait," said Amy. "You were serious?"

"Of course I was serious! How else do you expect me to bypass the temporal buffers while providing enough auxiliary power to the biomatrix resonator? Magic?"

"Naturally," said Amy. "Forget I asked."

The Doctor reached into his pockets and fished around. "Calculator, swiss army knife, leaky pen... oh, why is there never anything useful in here?" He kept rummaging. "Aha! Rory, hold this."

As he thrust a relatively short piece of simple white string into Rory's hands, the Doctor continued to pull a second piece out of his pocket. It was impossibly long, and the way the Doctor pulled and pull in a mad scramble to reach its end seemed akin to a magician revealing an endless length of coloured scarves. Eventually it emerged, and the full length of string sat in a limp coil at his feet. The Doctor scooped it up. "Two bits of string. Check and check. Now, about the wire... hmm..."

The Doctor delved deep, but seemed unable to find anything of use. Rory and Amy looked around, unsure of how to help. They were not known for carrying around such items on their person. Amy glanced at Susan, looking to gauge her reaction to—

"What's that at your neck?"

Susan looked at Amy. "What?"

She pointed. "The back of your collar. There's something sticking out."

Susan reached behind her, feeling her fingers at the back of her neck. She touched something, thin and wiry, and pulled it out, holding it up to her eyes as she examined it. "I didn't even notice. It must have been part of that horrid machine."

Amy pointed to the item. "Doctor, will this do?"

He stopped his rummaging and leaned in to give it a close inspection. "Yes, yes, not too shabby. Nice work, Susan. Thinking two steps ahead, very resourceful."

"But I didn't know I—"

Amy cut her off and leaned in with a whisper. "It doesn't matter. Take the compliment and let him do his thing."

The Doctor craned his neck to look up at the masses of electronics and cabling hanging from the underside of the platform. He twisted an end of the wire around a cable that stretched taught, and again around another cable that, by itself, didn't reach it, resulting in a rudimentary connection between the two. "Getting to where we're going should be the easy part," he said. "A realm without time means it exists at all times, everywhere. Like a doorway leading to every single point in history. The hard part is keeping it open long enough for us to slip inside." He stood back and admired his handiwork, pleased.

Rory raised an eyebrow. "That's it?"

"What do you mean, 'that's it'?" said the Doctor, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "Temporal bypass? Hello? Now come on, it's time for all hands on deck."

The Doctor raced back up to the TARDIS console with the others in tow. They all crowded around the panel and awaited his instructions.

"Don't touch anything," said the Doctor.

Amy tilted her head. "All hands off deck?"

"Off. Totally off. Power regulators are decoupled, and everything's charged above and beyond their normal payloads. Don't move near a single button. Don't even breathe. In fact, just stand over there." He pointed to the floor a short distance away. "All of you."

Amy, Rory and Susan looked amongst themselves, figuring their only response was to follow his directions, and as they did so, the Doctor very slowly tied one end of the longest string around a single lever. His movements were careful, cautious, and in stark contrast to his usual manic, energetic presence at the TARDIS controls. He took his time. Eventually, the knot was complete, and he looked at it, delicately pressed a couple of nearby buttons, then picked up the length of string that trailed from the lever. He walked away from the console backwards, laying the string in front of him like a long explosive fuse, and joined the group that awaited him, clenching the string's other end between his teeth.

"String tastes funny, did you know?" The Doctor spoke through the twine as his fingers fashioned a small loop from the second length of string, the shortest piece. He twirled it around his left index finger and finished it with a knot. And that was it, just a piece of string tied around his finger.

"What's that for?" Amy asked.

"A reminder."

"A reminder of what?"

"Shush! Questions are noisy, and I need to concentrate. This is a highly delicate process..."

The Doctor gradually increased the tension on the long string, slowly pulling it towards him until it was taught between his fingers and the console lever. A tense moment passed until, suddenly, the Doctor finished the motion with a hefty yank, pulling the string; a distant click from the console confirmed the movement of the lever. Gradually, the time rotor in the central column of the TARDIS started to glow a vibrant blue; a dull humming noise emerged and slowly built in volume.

"TARDIS energy has a unique signature," said the Doctor. "Normally it's contained, but my bit of jiggery-pokery has let out just enough for it to resonate with itself, seeking it out and feeding it back into — look, you can see it!"

He pointed to the console, and sure enough, it had started to change. The entire array started to become blurry as a TARDIS console of a totally different build appeared to overlap it — two unique designs sharing the same space. Then a second faded in. A third, a fourth. Faster now, they continued to pile in, and the entire area soon became one blurred, overlapped mass of TARDIS consoles, reeling in the designs of so many parallel units and bringing them into the one space.

"The energy of our TARDIS is looping into the energy of two parallel TARDISes," the Doctor said. 'Those two loop into two of their own, and so on, feeding back a daisy-chain of TARDIS energy — and that energy is stretching out among the stars, to every corner of the galaxy, across every moment in history. That energy is our barrier. That barrier is our bottle."

He dropped the string and went a short distance to the TARDIS wall. The weapon they had collected from the Shadow Proclamation, the genome blaster, was resting against it, and the Doctor picked it up and held it in both hands, gripping the gun stock tightly. He looked determined now, and the cards of his plan were well and truly on the table. This was it, then.

"Time to shake the bottle," he said.

Amy, Rory and Susan all braced themselves. But the Doctor didn't move. His face had frozen as a moment of sudden realisation overtook him. Blindsided.

"It just occurred to me. I can't see me. Past me can't see future me. If past me knows what the future me will look like, it might cause past me to change his course, thereby preventing future me from doing any of what we're doing now. I need to arrive at this point, which means I need to stay hidden." He tapped a finger on the grip of the gun. "I can't be seen. This needs to be done by someone else."

Rory and Amy exchanged wary glances.

The Doctor noticed, shook his head. "You two can forget it. You're part of my future; the moment past me first meets you at the proper point in his timeline, he'll know what's coming. We can't risk it."

"So who then?" Amy asked.

The Doctor bit his lip. "It needs to be someone he already knows. Someone he would have no reason to regard with suspicion. Someone he trusts."

* * *

Footsteps.

In crisp, rhythmic echo, two immaculately polished black shoes clacked against a seemingly endless hallway of white tiles. The shoes lead to the cuffs of tartan trousers, pressed to a crease so fine as to appear razor sharp. Together, they moved in strong, confident strides. Filled with purpose. Determination. And yet, beneath it all, a hint of desperation.

The rhythm was disrupted, and the footsteps stumbled slightly. A brief gasp for breath, and they started again, the sound of the two feet now punctuated by a third clack — an ebony cane, its tip pressed to the floor as the owner used the stick for support. The offset reverberated from wall to wall. _Clack, clack-clack_. _Clack, clack-clack_.

The hallway was long, and the steps were many, but eventually they came to a halt at the foot of a stark white shape. It appeared to be a featureless rectangle, standing tall on its narrow end, its proportions similar to that of a conventional phone booth. There was no visible door, but a wrinkled hand wearing a blue signet ring on one mottled finger reached out and touched the surface. It pushed inward, and the hand drew back, startled, as though surprised by the motion. Or, perhaps, expecting a different result to what had been offered.

A crack of darkness was visible beyond the open door. There was no indication of what was inside, so the hand pushed the door further in, revealing an interior that, although shrouded in shadow, hinted at a space far bigger than what the outward walls would be expected to contain. Tentatively now, the figure entered the room, with footsteps that echoed against far-away walls inside as distinctly as they did outside.

He advanced slowly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Ahead, he could see only the barest of details masked by shadow. That looked to be the time rotor straight ahead, and beneath it, yes, that was the console alright. Six sides. One for each pilot. It appeared a little elaborate for a Type 40, even a little blurry. Perhaps his eyesight wasn't what it used to be. Still, he should have no problems figuring—

A harsh spotlight cut into his thoughts as it glared down on him from overhead, bathing the figure in brilliant white light and revealing his full form against the darkness. Those tartan trousers were accompanied by a number of distinctly Edwardian-esque garments: a waist coat, a white dress shirt, a fob watch, a frock coat. Grey, almost white hair touched the shoulders. Brown eyes surrounded by wrinkles squinted into the light, and he held up a hand as a shield. A man, old in appearance but young in body. A Time Lord.

The Doctor.

A second overhead light shone before him. Standing near the blurred console array, illuminated by the light from above, was Susan. He recognised his granddaughter instantly. She was holding some sort of device with both hands — thick and bulky, about the length of a rifle and emitting a constant high pitched electrical hum. Heavy, from the way she struggled against its weight. A weapon. Clearly, a weapon — because it was pointed right at him; he was staring directly down the barrel, lit in a brilliant blue hue.

She was crying.

"Susan?" he said. "Gracious, child, what are you doing in here? What's that you're holding?"

"You need to stay where you are, grandfather."

The man heard a sound behind him — a creaking hinge. He turned to see two figures, a man in a checked shirt and a woman with red hair, locking the doors and standing guard, preventing access to the only exit.

"What is this?" said the man. "What are you talking about?"

Tears began to flow from Susan's eyes. "Please. Stay there."

"I'd do as she says," said a voice from the shadows. It sounded like it was coming from above, from an upper level. "Locked doors behind you and a charged genome blaster in front of you. Consider it advice that you'd do well to heed."

The old man looked around him, trying to find the source of the voice. "Who are you? What are you doing in my TARDIS?"

"It's not your TARDIS." From the shadows, the Doctor spoke slowly, with deliberate authority. "But it looks like the unit you had your eye on from the outside, doesn't it? Why use a chameleon circuit when a perception filter will do, that's what I always say. Besides, you and I both know what you came in here to do." He paused. "It's not 'your' TARDIS. Deep down, you'll always know that. But in another world, it wouldn't matter."

The old man puffed his cheeks. "The words of a fool do pain the ear. Show yourself so that I might see your face do similar to the eye."

"You don't need to see me. You just need to listen and obey."

"Obey!" The old man snorted at the word. "My dear fellow, I insist you show some respect for your elders."

He could almost hear a smirk from the shadows. "I might ask the same from you."

The man made a gruff noise in his throat and turned his attention back to Susan, still standing under the spotlight and still training the gun directly at him. He looked to her hands; whether by tension or by the sheer weight of the device, they were shaking. The barrel of the weapon wavered slightly. He considered the situation. If he was going to gain ground, it needed to be now.

"Come child," he said gently, taking a cautious step forward. "Move away from these fools. Let's you and I leave this place. You don't know what you're doing."

"No, grandfather. I can't."

"Put that weapon down this instant."

"I can't."

"Put it down!"

"No, grandfather! I won't!"

Her sharp tone rattled him. Such a direct refusal from someone so young. So unlike the girl he knew. "You've gone mad, child," said the old man. "What have they done to you?"

Susan didn't answer. There was nothing to say. Nothing she could allow herself to say.

The old man licked his lips, nervous. He was running out of options. He started to back away towards the TARDIS door. "That's far enough," said Amy. The old man halted his steps as she motioned to Rory. "This one watches kung fu movies and I know how to deliver the deadest of dead arms."

"What is the meaning of this? Stop this nonsense at once!"

The Doctor still stood in the shadows. "You're not going anywhere," he said. "We need you. And in a way that you can't understand, you need us."

He took a step forward, edging towards the light just far enough to better establish his presence yet not reveal his face. "We're here to stop you. Time and space is on the brink of total collapse. Actions you are yet to do, decisions you are yet to make, are intertwined throughout the past and future. You can't know why or how, but you need to know that stopping you is the only way to set things right in this universe and beyond. Your journey needs to end before it ever had a chance to begin."

The old man stood there, processing his words. Working through their meaning, feeling the consequences. "You're... you're insisting on a sentence before the crime. I do not know who you are or where you're from, but some would consider that unjust."

"Others would consider it necessary."

"To kill in the name of judgement? To task my own granddaughter with my execution? I beg of you, hear the madness in your words. Find the decency to give life the chance to learn."

A long pause. "I can't do that today," said the Doctor. "You in my shoes would condede that."

"I shan't take this TARDIS. I'll leave it alone. I'll walk away. A journey ended before it—"

"That's not enough," said the Doctor. "We need to be sure."

"But you have my word!"

"We need more than your word."

The old man swallowed, hard. His throat felt thick and dry. There seemed to be no way to bargain for a compromise. Their goal was unmoved. He said nothing.

The Doctor spoke again. "Susan. Now."

She looked up at the platform with pleading eyes. "But grandfather..."

"Don't worry, child," said the old man. "It will be alright."

"You need to do it now, Susan," said the Doctor, his voice taking on a firm edge.

"Please, don't make me, I can't..."

The Doctor shouted. "Now!"

Susan tightened her grip on the gun. She looked down the barrel at the old man.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Her finger curled around the trigger, tighter and tighter. It pushed back against the pressure until, in an instant, it touched breaking point. Sparks of blue energy crackled around the weapon before it shot a vibrant pulse straight at the old man, loud and booming, and hitting him square in the chest with overwhelming force.

The gun was fired.

The Cloister Bell tolled.

And everything went white.


	7. The Woman Who Wasn't There

**CHAPTER 7: The Woman Who Wasn't There**

"Space and time isn't safe yet. The TARDIS exploded for a reason."

Dressed in his top hat and tails, the Doctor circled the console as he addressed Rory and Amy, still outfitted in their own wedding attire. "Something drew the TARDIS to this particular date and blew it up. But why? And why now? The Silence, whatever it is, is still out there, and I have to..."

His train of thought afforded a fraction of a reprieve — long enough for him to finally register the sound of a ringing phone. "Excuse me a moment," he said as he picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

The Doctor's tone instantly became one of recognition, of familiarity. "Oh! Hello. I'm sorry, this is a very bad line." A pause. His tone fell. "No, but that's not possible. She was sealed into the Seventh Obelisk, I was at the prayer meeting. Well, no, I get that it's important. An Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express..." A smile crept over his face as his eyes darted over to Amy and Rory. "...in space."

He paused. "Give us a mo."

Cupping his hand over the receiver, the Doctor turned to the newly-wedded couple. "Sorry, something's come up. This will have to be goodbye."

"Yeah, I think it's goodbye," Amy nodded. She turned to Rory. "Do you think it's goodbye?"

"Definitely goodbye," he said.

Immediately, Amy headed for the TARDIS doors. She poked her head out into the night — into the overgrown garden of her childhood house — and waved with heavy, deliberate emphasis. "Goodbye!"

And then, realising she actually meant it, Amy allowed herself a moment to take in the sight for one last time. All those years. All those memories. All that longing, back in her childhood, for the Raggedy Man to return in his magic blue box.

"Goodbye," she said.

And she closed the door.

With the phone still in hand, the Doctor smiled. He put the handset to his ear; his company was decided. "Don't worry about a thing, Your Majesty. We're on our way."

He hung up, then turned his attention to the TARDIS controls. Throwing a lever, the craft was set into motion, and all three held onto the console as they balanced against its wayward movements. Amy and Rory exchanged excited glances, not knowing what awaited them - but knowing that the uncertainty was part of the thrill.

And then, without warning, the Doctor pushed all his weight down on a nearby switch. Metal screeched against metal as the TARDIS shuddered intermittently, then with a loud bang, stopped cold in an abrupt halt. Hollow silence filled the room as the Doctor looked at Rory and Amy with a furrowed brow.

"Didn't we do this bit?"

"Do what bit?" said Amy.

"This. Right now. This whole thing. Well, except for us talking about whether or not we did this bit. But everything before it feels... familiar."

She looked around the walls of the TARDIS. "It's all new to me."

"Deja vu, Doctor?" said Rory.

"Something like that."

The Doctor looked genuinely perplexed, and Rory stepped forward in concern. "Are you alright?"

There was no answer, and Rory asked again. The Doctor appeared to be gathering his thoughts. He attempted to wear a smile, but it didn't stick. "Must have been something I ate," he said. "Or something I thought I ate. Or just something I thought. Crazy town up here, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise." He dusted his hands, an apparent signal to dispose of the entire conversation. "But anyway, enough about me. Back to business. Now... where were we going?"

Amy and Rory looked at each other. "You hadn't decided yet." said Amy.

That perplexed look returned. "But we were about to head to..." His words trailed off, their conclusion long forgotten. The Doctor racked his brain, tried to remember his destination. He had decided, hadn't he? He thought they had. And yet... yet it seemed so cloudy, like a distant haze that was being carried away by a gentle breeze.

But then, the haze cleared, and the Doctor blinked. "You're right. We were still deciding."

He laughed, a simple chortle that spoke of the obviousness of the situation. Of course they were still deciding. How could he forget something like that? "This old brain isn't what it used to be, I suppose. Lots of clutter rattling around, lots of cobwebs in the corners." His fingers closed around a lever on the console and he attempted to pull it upwards. "Forgot where I put my sock drawer once. Who forgets that? Who misplaces a sock drawer? Turns out it was where it always was, but the room had shifted around it when the TARDIS... what is wrong with this thing?"

The Doctor continued to struggle against the mechanism, battling with great force to move it into place. It wasn't normally this hard. He shifted his stance and leaned in with his shoulder, and through gritted teeth he gave the lever every ounce of strength in his body. Eventually it snapped upwards and into place, and the Doctor straightened his jacket in satisfaction.

"Whew. That was an effort. Pent up energy in the field compression array has never been so difficult to downshift." The Doctor patted the TARDIS console with a tender hand. "What's wrong, girl? What did you have in there?"

"Whatever it is," Amy said, "it's shifted to the monitor."

She pointed to the nearby display; on screen was a simple white dot against a black background. Nothing more. Curious, the Doctor peered into it, then down at the console keyboard where his fingers typed at a furious pace. "What are you, then?" he asked.

As he entered the final key, the circle cut to static for the briefest of seconds before the image changed. A woman with long, blonde hair stared directly into the camera, her perfect complexion, full pouty lips and deep blue eyes quickly establishing her as a figure of absolute beauty. She sat alone in a room, the lights around her flickering intermittently, and she looked nervous as she searched for the right words.

"You told me to leave this for you," she said. "You said something about using the time core of the TARDIS to retain a message that could withstand a dimensional shift. You also said not to mention any of the events that happened, but to leave you with enough information so that you'd know what to do should the time ever come again." The woman chuckled. "Not exactly making it easy, are you? But then again, knowledge of events that happened in a universe that says they didn't is what got us into this mess in the first place. So let's keep things purely hypothetical."

She inhaled deeply. "Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you needed a big force. A massive force. You're said you're going to tell us the only way to unleash that much power is to cause a paradox, but what you won't tell us is that sometimes the best way to do it is to _prevent_ a paradox. Like, say, to prevent the very paradox that attracted your attention in the first place. And if you ever come across a weapon that eliminates targets based on its genome structure, a good way of preventing it is to secretly change that weapon's setting from Time Lord to something else. The Solonian field mouse, I believe you chose."

The woman shook her head in disbelief. "You clever man. You had this one cooking for a while. You'll ensure you won't die, but doing so means you can't prevent your death and do, well, any of this because you weren't alerted to it. No paradox, plus no alarm, equals a paradox. Well, that's the plan, at least. And that's probably more information than you need."

She paused, then smiled to the camera. "Listen to me. I'm speaking about you succeeding in doing things that you haven't done yet. But that's how time works, isn't it. Depending on your perspective, things have either happened or they're yet to come. They were five minutes ago or five centuries ahead. If you're watching this, it means that everything I've just said did happen and you were successful. But because you were successful, it didn't happen. Time can be so mysterious. Like right now - that feeling of deja vu you're no doubt experiencing is just due to the residual overlap. It will pass at the moment of temporal difference. The lack of a paradox. You said that, too."

The woman sighed - deep and sad. "We're not going to meet again. Though if you succeed in what you're going to do, we'll never have met at all. I'm not sure how I feel about either."

The woman looked off screen as she turned her attention towards an outside voice, calling out from a distant location. "Miranda! Come out here and be amazing."

The recorded voice of the Doctor.

She turned back to the camera. "'Amazing'," she said. "I'm going to try, but you set the benchmark pretty high. Your mind is the most wonderful thing I've ever encountered. As appealing as it is intimidating. And yet, strangely unaware." She curled a length of hair around a finger. "I'm surprised you never noticed. I only glitch my words when I'm around someone I like."

The woman smiled. "Goodbye, Doctor. Thank you for everything."

And the monitor cut to static.

The Doctor slowly reached up and turned it off. A heavy silence hung among the group as they processed what had just happened. The Doctor swallowed. His throat felt dry.

Rory was the first to speak. "Who was that?" he asked gently.

The Doctor's eyes were distant. Pondering. And he turned to Rory, still lost in a haze of wonder, and said, as though waking from a dream:

"I haven't the faintest idea."

No one knew what to say after that, and for the longest time they just stood, replaying the moment in their minds.

"Time travel is funny business," the Doctor said slowly, solemnly. "In here it's a linear journey, an adventure, but out there... out there it's a pincushion of moments that create stories told for generations. Decisions we make slice through lives, through memories, through histories. It's a journey of everywhere and everywhen, and out there, even when things happen out of order or not at all, those stories are told as they should. History happens because of what you can do, rather than despite it." He gave an absurd chuckle. "It doesn't make sense, does it? Nine hundred-odd-years on, and even I'm still getting my head around it. Even I, a mad man in a box, a man who's done so much for so long, still can't help but think about that universal question... what if?"

Amy regarded the Doctor with tender eyes, and then noticed something. "Doctor, what are you doing?"

"Hmm?"

She motioned towards his hands, and the Doctor looked down at them. Idly, they fidgeted, the fingers of one hand wrapping around the other. He appeared to be feeling for something — a ring, perhaps — that was no longer there. The Doctor gradually grew aware his motions, and he cleared his throat, brushing his hands on his jacket to busy them elsewhere. A nervous reaction, he figured. Nothing more.

"It's been a big day," he said. "Least of all for you two. Mister and Misses Married! You don't get that every day. Well, you do in the Galaposit Theta quadrant — citizens are instructed by law to marry anew every twenty minutes. 'Course, the cyclic radiation means the average lifespan for indigenous life is only three hours, so, you know, swings and roundabouts."

He clapped his hands, sparking himself back to life. This energy, this enthusiasm, this was the Doctor in his element. He looked at the couple before him. "Swings and roundabouts. I think I know of a planet—"

"You always know of a planet!" said Amy. "Talking plants, three moons, lakes of silver..."

"And they're all out there, waiting for us among the stars. Shall we see them?"

"Do you need to ask?"

"I just like to hear you say it." The Doctor turned to Rory. "You too, newlywed."

"You've got a combo deal now, I'm afraid. Take wife, take husband."

The Doctor grinned. "A honeymoon, then! Oh, the sights you'll see. The places you go. And you're not getting any younger; let's get cracking before you're both oldlyweds! Diamond caverns, floating cities... I even know of a place where everything's upside down and the natives worship big versions of smaller things. Next stop: Australia!"

He worked the TARDIS console with frenzied energy, and Amy and Rory shared a hug. They smiled, excited by the adventures that lay ahead.

And not knowing what a future with the Doctor would ever hold.

**THE END**


End file.
